Colorado River Water Rights Report

Gary Hill Ranch Near Kremmling, CO

Decree 96 CW 126

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this report is to provide documentation of the transferable consumptive use associated with the water rights from the Hill Ranch on Muddy Creek, which is tributary to the Colorado River at Kremmling Colorado. This ranch itself was purchased in 1990 by the Colorado River Water Conservation District for construction of the Muddy Creek Reservoir. The 1990 sale was for the land only, and the ranch owner retained ownership of all water rights on the property. Currently, the owner has leased the water rights to a user lower on the Colorado river near Silt Colorado, but they are available for other uses or sale. The monthly volumes, flow rates, and priorities of the water available for this proposed change will be specified in this report.

These rights provide an alternative supply to water leased from other projects, such as the River District’s Wolford Mountain Reservoir. They offer four major advantages compared to Wolford lease water:

1. They are a permanent supply as opposed to a temporary lease. They can not be canceled, terminated or priced out of reach.
2. They require little more legal effort to use than would a wholesale contract from Wolford Mtn. (Both require the applicant to obtain a decree.)
3. At the current asking price, purchase of these rights will cost less than the up-front 40-year lease cost for an equivalent amount of Wolford water.
4. These rights constitute real property, which provides a perpetual ownership. As such they have the potential to increase in value if water supplies become scarce. They can also be disposed of or passed on to an heir, while a lease of water offers no permanent proprietary value whatsoever.

In 1996 the owner of the rights obtained a decree from Division 5 water court which quantified the transferable consumptive use credits from the ranch and specified how the credits are to be determined That decree, No 96 CW 126, also specified that the new use for the rights would be the McLin pumping station mentioned above. Change of the rights to a new location will require return to water court to amend the portions of the decree dealing with the location of the new use. A complete copy of the decree is available on this web site.

LOCATION AND IRRIGATED ACREAGE

The Hill Ranch was located along Muddy Creek in Grand County, Colorado, just north of the present location of Wolford Mountain (Muddy Creek) dam within sections 12, 13, 24 and 25 of Township 2 North, Range 81 West; and in Section 18 of Township 2 North, Range 80 West of the 6th prime meridian. The ranch has been inundated by the Muddy Creek reservoir. The total acreage of the ranch has been estimated at 920 acres, of which 358 acres were irrigated pasture and hay fields. Figure 1 shows the location of the Hill Ranch in the Colorado River Watershed, Figure 2 shows the irrigated acreage and the locations of the streams and ditches which provided irrigation water to the ranch..

WATER RIGHTS

The water rights associated with the Hill Ranch are shown in Table 1. This list includes several rights which are senior to the major control rights on the upper Colorado River: the Glenwood Power Canal (aka Shoshone) and the Cameo call at Grand Valley. The former right is for 1250 cfs, has an appropriation date of Jan 7, 1902.

The Cameo call derives from a group of large irrigation rights including the Grand Valley Canal and the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District. The most senior of these rights was adjudicated on July 22, 1912 in a supplemental adjudication; it is junior to Shoshone. The total decreed flow rate for the water rights on the ranch equals 96.47 cubic feet per second (cfs). Of this 14.88 cfs have appropriation dates senior to the Shoshone right.

Figure 1: Location of Hill Ranch

Figure 2: Ranch Details

TABLE 1: HILL RANCH WATER RIGHTS (Listed from North to South on Ranch)

DITCHES AND IRRIGATION SYSTEM

Prior to inundation by Wolford Mtn Reservoir, the irrigation system of the northern portion of the Hill Ranch consisted of a collector ditch running along the west side of the irrigated area. This ditch picked up flow from Muddy Creek, Red Dirt Creek, Pass Creek and Alkali Creek under the decrees for the Fay DeBerard No.1, Red Dirt, Preston No.1 and No.2 and Wheatley Enlargement of the Preston No.2. Once in the ditch, water could be passed down to the southern end of the irrigated area by discharging into and re-diverting from the intervening creeks. The Middle area was irrigated by the George Jones Ditch, which fed water to the east side of Muddy Creek, using a headgate on Muddy Creek. The South area received water from the Fay DeBerard No. 2 Ditch, which diverted from the south-west bank of Muddy Creek.

HISTORICAL CONSUMPTIVE USE

Paragraph 7 of the decree specifies the historical consumptive use associated with the ranch. The historical consumptive use for the ranch ws determined to be 2.25 af/acre. This was determined using the modified Blaney Criddle procedure with lysimeter derived coefficients. (See Table 7.2 of the decree.)

Table 7.3 of the decree specifies the monthly consumptive use credits associated with each of the six water rights included in the Hill Muddy Creek Ranch package. (These are also summarized below in Table 2.) The decree allows up to 605 af of fully consumable water to be diverted at the new location under the decrees senior to Shoshone and Cameo calls. In addition there are 84 af of depletions available which while junior to Cameo are senior enough to be covered by Green Mountain SD80 operations, and are very unlikely to ever be curtailed; bringing the total consumable water to 689 af.

Table 2: Historical Consumptive Use (af), Hill Ranch

Table 3: Historic flow rates (cfs), Hill Ranch

ESTIMATED VALUE

As of the date of this document, the estimated average value of the rights is $1,342,825. This is broken down according to the time of year and seniority of the rights as shown in the following table.

Table 4. Estimated value of Hill, Muddy Creek water rights.

Cost per acre foot CU = $1,949.

Back to Publications | Revised Feb 7, 2003