Opinion ID: 2624506
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ditch Rights-of-Way and Water Rights

Text: The 1861 An Act to Protect and Regulate the Irrigation of Lands, 1861 Colo. Territorial Laws, § 2, 67-68, provided for obtaining irrigation water use rights from the stream, together with the rights-of-way necessary to divert and convey the appropriated water to its place of beneficial use: Section 1. That all persons who claim, own or hold a possessory right or title to any land or parcel of land within the boundary of Colorado Territory, as defined in the Organic Act of said Territory, when those claims are on the bank, margin or neighborhood of any stream of water, creek or river, shall be entitled to the use of the water of said stream, creek or river, for the purposes of irrigation, and making said claims available, to the full extent of the soil, for agricultural purposes. Id. at 67 (emphasis added). Section 2.laws That when any person, owning claims in such locality, has not sufficient length of area exposed to said stream in order to obtain a sufficient fall of water necessary to irrigate his land, or that his farm or land, used by him for agricultural purposes, is too far removed from said stream and that he has no water facilities on those lands, he shall be entitled to a right of way through the farms or tracts of land which lie between him and said stream, or the farms or tracts of land which lie above and below him on said stream, for the purposes as herein before stated. Id. at 67 (emphasis added). In Yunker v. Nichols, our territorial predecessors considered ditch rights-of-way so important to the establishment and exercise of water rights that they cautioned the legislature against ever repealing the 1861 statute: When the lands of this territory were derived from the general government, they were subject to the law of nature, which holds them barren until awakened to fertility by nourishing streams of water, and the purchasers could have no benefit from the grant without the right to irrigate them. It may be said, that all lands are held in subordination to the dominant right of others, who must necessarily pass over them to obtain a supply of water to irrigate their own lands, and this servitude arises, not by grant, but by operation of law. 1 Colo. 551, 555 (1872) (opinion by Chief Justice Hallett) (emphasis added). I conceive that, with us, the right of every proprietor to have a way over the lands intervening between his possessions and the neighboring stream for the passage of water for the irrigation of so much of his land as may be actually cultivated, is well sustained by force of the necessity arising from local peculiarities of climate....