Colorado water, statewide and where you live
Snowmelt, rivers, reservoirs, canals, treatment plants, and dozens of public bodies stand between a storm on the Divide and your kitchen sink. Type your town below, or pick a basin on the map, and the page recenters on your patch of the state.
Step 1 · Your place
Colorado divides water planning into nine regions, and their edges follow the divides between river systems, not county lines. Pick one, search your town, or stay statewide.
Arkansas
Pueblo · lower valley
Colorado
Headwaters
Gunnison
Black Canyon
North Platte
North Park
Rio Grande
San Luis Valley
Southwest
Dolores · San Juan
South Platte
Front Range · plains
Yampa
Yampa River basin
Metro
Denver metro
Pick a region
All nine regions
Statewide bodies set the frame every region works inside: the water plan, the grant programs, the permits, and the stream gauges that everyone else's numbers come from.
Who’s here
Owns the water
Applies everywherePlans ahead
The state's nine basin roundtables
In ColoradoPays for the work
In ColoradoDoes the work
In ColoradoYou can join
In ColoradoStep 2 · The short version
Two minutes on the shape of it. Some of these bodies govern everywhere in Colorado; some are specific to Colorado.
In Colorado water is a property right, ordered by who claimed it first. The state engineer's office keeps that ledger and shuts off junior users in a dry year.
In charge here: Colorado Division of Water Resources
Every region writes its own plan for supply gaps, healthy rivers and agriculture, then feeds it into the statewide Colorado Water Plan.
In charge here: The state's nine basin roundtables
Most local projects run on state grants and a handful of statewide funds, matched with local money. Those programs publish their deadlines and their grantees.
In charge here: Colorado Water Conservation Board grant programs
Watershed groups, districts, utilities and volunteers restore streams, monitor quality, fix headgates and run the education that keeps it going.
In charge here: Barr-Milton Watershed Association
Step 3 · Your move
Every one of these is a public door: a meeting you can sit in, a newsletter you can read, a group that wants volunteers, a person who answers email.
Sit in on a basin roundtable
The state's nine basin roundtables meets in public and posts its agenda.
Volunteer with a watershed group
Barr-Milton Watershed Association and others run monitoring, planting and clean-up days.
Find a project near you
See what's funded and underway within your watershed right now.
Email someone who answers
Every profile lists a public contact, source, and meeting page.