Water management is a necessary part of life in the Grand Valley, and we're doing our best to improve the safety of water as it flows through your neighborhood.

From Loma to Palisade, the Grand Valley Drainage District is working to keep our waterways flowing smoothly - returning water to the Colorado River and making your neighborhood as safe as we can.

Law of Water versus Water Law

The laws of water that drainage has to consider are simple.  There are two basic law:

#1 water flows downhill and

#2 if it stops flowing, it ponds with the surface of the pond level.

Removal of ponds or puddles on property requires a ditch or pipe with a downhill grade to move the standing water away by gravity.  One of the Drainage District’s legislative mandates is to keep the water flowing toward the Colorado River.

Blocking a drain ditch with a dam will result in a pond upstream.   Damming a ditch to pond water does not change law of water #2.  The water level in the ground adjacent to the pond will normally be at the same level as the water in the pond.  The District’s original responsibility of lowering ground water is defeated by allowing long term water storage ponds in the large, deep drain ditches.  The District cannot allow one property owner to back up water and damage an upstream property.

Water law in this State is known as the Colorado doctrine of prior appropriation.  It grew from scarcity of the liquid resource.  A land owner is not entitled to use all the water that crosses his property just because the waterway is there as in the riparian doctrine practiced in eastern states.  An earlier water user may have filed on the water in the Water Court and been awarded a senior “right” to store then use the water once up to the decree in the “adjudicated water right.”  The water court hearing is the time to determine if a water storage activity will harm an upstream property or downstream water user.

District staff will work to explain the District’s position on activities that may happen in District maintained drains.   The District offices are staffed from 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM Monday through Friday.