Shortly before Filings 2 and 3 were being formed, Colorado changed the rules on who could drill a well. Specifically, the developer of a subdivision was required to develop a well augmentation plan which showed the source of water that would be used to replace the water being removed from the stream system by the subdivision wells. These augmentation plans had to be approved by the water court which issued a "Decree." Generation of augmentation plans is a very expensive process costing many tens of thousands of dollars. It is also an "iffy" process because there are always "objectors" who will fight your attempts to use water. So, once you have a working augmentation plan, it is best to stay with it and not re-open the case.
To understand augmentation plans, you need to know a few definitions. First, there are two kinds of water ... diverted water and depleted (or consumed) water. When a farmer takes water out of a stream for irrigation purposes, he is "diverting" the water. Most of that water (around 90%) eventually returns to the stream. The part that does not return is called depletion or consumed water. Some depleted water is captured in the crops being grown and is carted away from the stream system. Some is lost through evaporation.
In the case of a well, the amount you draw from your well (the amount that is measured by your water meter) is a diversion. Since our well permits require that all water from our wells eventually be return to our septic systems, almost all of the water diverted by our wells is recovered and returned to the stream system. The amount that is not recovered is considered to be depleted or consumed. Since nobody really knows how much of the diverted water is actually lost, assumptions have to be made. In the case of the Lakemoor West augmentation plan, the people who developed our plan made the assumption that 15% of the water was lost (depleted or consumed). Other smaller percentages have been used by augmentation plans for other subdivisions. The people who wrote our plan were probably trying to ensure the Court would not quibble over our depletion numbers, or they realized that water soaks into the ground very poorly along the Four Mile Creek.
Since our augmentation plan is a Court Decree, it is basically the law. Unless somebody changes the Plan, the Plan says exactly what we have to do. Not only that, the Division of Water Resources has no option but to do what the Plan says to do. They are responsible for administering the plan and they have no ability to do something that is contrary to the plan, unless specifically permitted by the water court.
The Division of Water Resources is run by the State Engineer. His job is Water. In our case, we have to deal with Division 2 which is responsible for the Arkansas River. Division 2 is located in Pueblo. It is run by the Division 2 Engineer. His biggest responsibility is to ensure that water in the river system is administered in accordance with water rights. Somewhere there is a person who has the most senior water rights. If there is only enough water to meet that person's allotment, then that person is the only one allowed to take water from the river system. That person got his senior water rights by being here first (or by buying the rights from someone who was here first). Water rights go back to 1849. If there is some extra water, then the person with the next most senior water rights gets to use some.
Lakemoor West actually owns some water rights know as the First and Second Leon Ditches. The seniority of those water rights go back to 1874. We don't own all of the Leon Ditch water rights but we own about half of it. These water rights were originally used for irrigation of land in our subdivision, and they "can" help us with our wells, but only during the irrigation season. We have recently learned from the Water Commissioner that the irrigation season in our area is from March through October. Since we are still in a drought, some years our water rights do not provide us any help at all because we are "out of priority." During 2008, we would have been allowed to use the water up until mid-summer at which time we went "out of priority." However, in 2009, we were in priority from May through October.
The Division of Water Resources (Division 2) considers water taken from our wells to have an immediate effect on Four Mile Creek. Accordingly, that water must be replaced. If we are not allowed to use our water rights at any given time because they are out of priority, then we need to get water from somewhere else to compensate for our well usage. Our developers made a contractual agreement with what is now Mountain Mutual Water Company. That Company provides water to Cripple Creek Mountain Estates and they obtain their water (around 100,000 gallons per day) from large wells located at Gillette Flats.
The Numbers: Our Plan assumes that there will eventually be 75 lots with wells, and that 3.5 people will live on each lot, and that each person will use (divert) 80 gallons per day. This turns out to be 23.52 acre feet of diverted water of which 15% or 3.53 acre feet was assumed to be depleted or consumed. During the times of the "average" year when our Leon Ditch water rights are in-priority, we are NOT diverting up to 139 acre feet for irrigation and we are NOT depleting up to 13.3 acre feet of water from the creek. In other words, in some years we are putting back into the creek (by not taking it out) a whole lot more water than we could possibly use. Unfortunately, that is going on only during wet years and only during the months of the year considered to be the irrigation season. The rest of the time, our water rights are not replacing the water being diverted by our wells. That is where Mountain Mutual is supposed to come in.
When all the lots in the Filings 2 and 3 are developed (have houses and wells on them), our Plan assumes that the subdivision could consume 3.53 acre feet of water per year. The Plan and our contract with Mountain Mutual provides for replacing 3.0 acre feet from the Mountain Mutual wells. The Plan also assumes, on average, that around 13.3 acre feet will be replaced by our water rights. So, during a year when our water rights never go into priority, the Plan assumes that our subdivision, when fully developed, could consume 3.53 acre feet but only replace 3.0 acre feet. In other words, the Plan has accepted the fact that we might come up short some years. This was apparently considered to be acceptable because during the average year the subdivision could be providing up to 16.3 acre feet (13.3 + 3.0) of augmentation. During a wet year, we could be providing even more augmentation than that.
At the current time we are not a fully developed subdivision, and our water meter readings are indicating that we appear to be consuming less than 0.5 acre feet of water per year. Having this information allows the Water Board to permit us to replace only what we use. So instead of requiring us to provide up to 3.0 acre feet of water from Mountain Mutual during times when our water rights are out of priority, we are being required to provide no more than our actual consumption (e.g., 0.5 acre feet) as indicated by our water meters.
It turned out that there are other "rules" in existence that almost dictate that readings be taken monthly if the goal is to minimize the impact and expense (to well owners) associated with administering our Plan. Specifically, the Division of Water Resources requires that augmentation water be provided within one month of consumption. The rules also permit "consumptive use credits" from water rights to be applied during the month of consumption and allow any excess to be applied to the preceding and following months. When you put all this together, the only good approach is to get meter readings monthly.
It turns out that the resulting Lakemoor West approach for administering our Augmentation Plan by reporting usage on a monthly basis is very similar to what many other subdivisions in our shoes are doing.