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Water Rights Resources

Water law is complex, nuanced, and can be difficult to understand. We delve into common water law concepts and provide tutorials that describe how it use publicly available tools to learn more about water rights. To this end, below are a series of articles that are designed to help parties develop a general understanding of some of the basic principles of water law. The information provided below is for educational purposes only and if you have specific questions about your water rights, please contact the attorneys at Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher for legal advice. Use of this information is explicitly subject the website disclaimer available here.

Laserfiche Tutorial: How to Search for a Water Court Decree if You Know the Case Number

How to Search for a Water Court Decree if You Know the Case NumberWater court decrees are relatively easy to obtain if you know the case number for the decreethat you are searching for. This tutorial will explain how to find a water court decree based on the case number.

1. Go to dwr.colorado.gov and click on the “Research Records” button shown below:

2. Click on the “Laserfiche Weblink” box shown below:

3. Select “Water Court” from the drop-down menu as shown below:

4. Select the appropriate water division if you know it and then type the water court case number into the “Case Number” field.
Note that most case numbers are formatted such as 25CW3041,with two numerals, followed by “CW,” and then four more numerals. For case numbers that have fewer than 4 numerals after the “CW,” you will need to add zeros in order to ensure thatthere are 4 numerals after the “CW.” In other words, 26CW36 must be entered as 26CW0036 or the search will not return any results.

5. Next click the green “Search” button and you will be taken to the results. Searching in this fashion will provide all of the water court case documents available in the DWR database for the case in question. The documents are labeled by “Document Type” and it should be easy to find the decree.

If you have questions about water court decrees, please reach out to the attorneys at Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher LLC.

William Wombacher