Last verified Jul. 2026

The types of Colorado water rights

Axis one: what water the right draws

Tributary water — the default

Surface streams and any groundwater hydraulically connected to them form a single system, administered together by priority. Colorado presumes groundwater is tributary unless it is proven otherwise, which is why a well can be curtailed by a call placed by a ditch miles downstream.

Nearly every irrigation right, municipal right, reservoir right, and non-exempt well in Colorado is a tributary right. When this site says "water right" without qualification, this is what it means.

Nontributary groundwater — deep, and allocated by land

Some aquifers are so isolated from surface streams that pumping them barely touches the rivers. Colorado draws that line with a precise hydrological test:

The practical significance is that nontributary groundwater is not allocated by priority at all. It is allocated to the owner of the overlying land, typically as a quantified 100-year supply. The best-known example is the Denver Basin, whose four named aquifers — Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, and Laramie-Fox Hills — appear by name in the statute. Much of the Front Range suburban fringe is built on Denver Basin water.

Designated groundwater — a separate system

On the eastern plains, eight designated basins are administered by the Colorado Ground Water Commission rather than the water courts, under article 90 of Title 37: Camp Creek, Kiowa-Bijou, Lost Creek, Northern High Plains, Southern High Plains, Upper Big Sandy, Upper Black Squirrel Creek, and Upper Crow Creek. DWR reference tables · verified Jul. 2026 Article 92 — the priority-administration article — expressly does not apply to them C.R.S. § 37-92-602(1)(a). If your land is in a designated basin, most of what you read about water court procedure does not describe your situation, and you should confirm which regime governs before doing anything else.

Axis two: absolute or conditional

Colorado lets you claim a priority date before the project exists, so that the years spent building a reservoir do not cost you your place in line. That claim is a conditional right:

A conditional right must be maintained: its holder returns to water court periodically to show reasonable diligence, and when the water is finally diverted and used, the right is made absolute with its original priority date. Fail to show diligence and it is cancelled — the statute calls that abandonment of a conditional water right C.R.S. § 37-92-103(1).

Other categories you will meet

• Direct flow vs storage. A direct-flow right takes water as it passes, measured in cfs. A storage right impounds it, measured in acre-feet, and is generally limited to one fill per year.
• Exempt wells. Small household wells permitted by the State Engineer outside the priority system — administratively a different animal from a decreed right.
• Instream flow rights. Held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board to keep water in the channel; the statute lists minimum stream flows as a beneficial use C.R.S. § 37-92-103(4)(c).
• Recreational in-channel diversions. Kayak-park rights held by local governments, defined at C.R.S. § 37-92-103(10.3).

Which category a right falls into changes almost everything downstream of it — how it is administered, whether it can be moved, and what it is worth. If you are trying to identify a specific right, read the decree; if you are trying to understand the system it sits in, keep going through the basics.