Opinion ID: 1433938
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Consent Of The Overlying Landowner To Use Of Denver Basin Aquifer Water

Text: Primarily through the adoption of Senate Bills 5 and 96-74, the legislature amended section 37-90-137(4) to define the legal standards for issuing well permits and decrees for the use of Denver Basin aquifer water. The General Assembly intended by these legislative enactments to conserve this nonrenewable resource for beneficial use by overlying landowners.
In Fundingsland v. Colorado Ground Water Comm'n, 171 Colo. 487, 496, 468 P.2d 835, 839 (1970), we recognized that [u]nderground water basins require management that is different from the management of surface streams and underground waters tributary to such streams. Such management is particularly appropriate with regard to bedrock aquifers, from which water might otherwise be withdrawn at a rate in excess of the annual recharge creating what is called a mining condition. Id. By means of Senate Bill 5, see ch. 285, sec. 3, § 37-90-137, 1985 Colo. Sess. Laws 1160, 1161-1166, the General Assembly subjected Denver Basin ground water, whether nontributary or not nontributary, to the separate water use system of section 37-90-137(4) and required the state engineer to promulgate rules for use of this water under section 37-90-137(9)(b). See Danielson v. Castle Meadows, Inc., 791 P.2d 1106, 1111 (Colo.1990). Senate Bill 5 further required the water conservation board to conduct studies of the state's water resources, including the Denver Basin aquifers. See ch. 285, sec. 8, § 37-60-115(3), 1985 Colo. Sess. Laws 1160, 1169. In Senate Bill 96-74, see ch. 258, sec. 2 & 3, § 37-90-137 & 137.5, 1996 Colo. Sess. Laws 1360, 1361-65, the legislature established additional requirements and proscriptions in regard to the use of not nontributary Denver Basin water and commissioned a special water committee to investigate Denver Basin and South Platte Basin ground water and surface water issues. Through the standards it has imposed with regard to the Denver Basin aquifers, the General Assembly has evidenced two primary concerns. [8] First is the concern about diminishment of the historically available supply of the South Platte River system through well pumping. This concern is addressed by the replacement provision applicable to well permits for nontributary water and the augmentation requirement applicable to decrees for not nontributary water. [9] Second is the General Assembly's concern that the Denver Basin aquifer water is of great economic importance to the overlying landowners, § 37-90-103(10.5), and therefore should remain available for their present and future use. Thus has the General Assembly recognized that new communities, individual homeowners, and other landowners may place heavy dependence on this finite resource. As water levels are lowered and a particular aquifer becomes depleted in the area, the landowners may find it necessary to drill a replacement well deeper into the formation or proceed into another aquifer underlying the land. Though the pro-rated life of the original permit is 100 years, with a maximum of one percent extracted per year, there can be no guarantee that the well's water source will actually be sustained for the entire century. Without an adequate water supply, the value of the overlying land estate may become greatly devalued at some point in the future. This explains why the homeowners contest the Well Company's application so vigorously. The General Assembly and the courts of this state have often reinforced the policy of keeping the public water resource available to those who can and will use it beneficially, as opposed to those who wish to speculate in its value and price. See, e.g., §§ 37-92-305(9)(a) & (b), 10 C.R.S. (1997); Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. Vidler Tunnel Water Co., 197 Colo. 413, 417, 594 P.2d 566, 568 (1979). Even though Denver Basin ground water is managed differently from waters of the natural stream, the Groundwater Management Act mirrors the anti-speculation, beneficial use, non-waste precepts of Colorado water law.
The legislature anticipated that the beneficial use of section 37-90-137(4) water would be made directly by the overlying farmer, homeowner, or business; or by a municipal, quasi-municipal, or community water system which holds out service to the landowner. See §§ 37-90-137(4)(b) & (8). [10] Accordingly, landowners must be provided with notice of a Denver Basin well permit application to the state engineer, see § 37-90-137(4)(b.5)(I), 10 C.R.S. (1997), or a decree application to the water court, see § 37-92-302(2)(b), 10 C.R.S. (1997); by necessary implication of these provisions, the landowners have standing to contest the application in order to protect their own interest in using the water. Section 37-90-137(4)(b)(I) limits annual withdrawals to one percent a year based upon an aquifer life of one hundred years. Section 37-90-137(4)(b)(II) provides (1) that the quantity of allowable withdrawal is calculated according to the surface area of land owned, and (2) that the applicant must be the landowner or a person who has the landowner's express or statutorily implied consent. [11] We have stated that the right to withdraw nontributary ground water ... is presumed to pass with the land either in a deed or a deed of trust unless explicitly excepted from the conveyance instrument. Bayou Land, 924 P.2d at 150. If the water court had found the water underneath the subdivision to be nontributary, the issue then before the court would have been whether the deed language could reserve to the developer of a subdivision, who has a duty to demonstrate an adequate water supply for that subdivision, an inchoate right to use the water off of the overlying land and not for the benefit of the subdivision. However, whether or not the deed language properly reserved the inchoate right to extract and use nontributary water, a matter we need not and do not decide here, it did not retain this right in regard to not nontributary water, and the water court found that the Well Company had not sustained its burden of proving that the water sought to be decreed is nontributary. [12] Whether Denver Basin aquifer water underlying a particular parcel of land is nontributary or not nontributary is determined by the state engineer when reviewing a well permit application or by the water court in ruling on a water court decree application. This basic and often key issue is a mixed question of fact and law. Making this determination necessarily involves the characteristics of the aquifer in relation to the legal standards of the Groundwater Management Act, the Water Right Determination and Administration Act, see § 37-92-101 to -602, 10 C.R.S. (1997), and the applicable state engineer regulations. See Denver Basin Rules, 2 C.C.R. § 402-6; Statewide Nontributary Ground Water Rules, 2 C.C.R. § 402-7. The water court here found that the water sought by the Well Company's decree application was not shown to be nontributary. We will not disturb a water court's factual determinations on appeal unless the evidence is wholly insufficient to support those determinations. See Board of County Comm'rs v. Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy Dist., 838 P.2d 840, 847 (Colo.1992). The water court was also correct in concluding that no ambiguity existed in the deed language. Regardless of what the grantor intended, the plain reservation language of the deed is restricted to nontributary water, and the meaning of this specific language is ascertainable within the instrument's four corners. See USI Properties East, Inc. v. Simpson, 938 P.2d 168, 173 (Colo.1997) (court must construe unambiguous language of a legal document in accordance with its plain meaning). Moreover, even if an ambiguity were to exist, a court should construe deed reservations by developers, who have the duty to demonstrate an adequate water supply as part of the subdivision approval process, in favor of homeowners or a community water provider benefiting the homeowners. Doubtful words and provisions in a water contract or deed are to be construed against the grantor who selected the terms therein. See Wyatt v. The Larimer & Weld Irrigation Co., 18 Colo. 298, 313, 33 P. 144, 149 (1893). The Well Company assumed the risk that the quitclaim deed might be insufficient to sustain a well permit or decree application. The fact that Denver Basin aquifer water underlying particular property could be classified as not nontributary under the law, instead of nontributary, was known at the time the Well Company took the quitclaim deed from the Development Company in 1992 and applied for a water court decree in 1993. For example, in our 1990 decision in Castle Meadows, 791 P.2d at 1110, we discussed the use of not nontributary Denver Basin water and dealt with questions from the water court concerning an augmentation decree for its use. In ruling on the application in this case, the water court correctly determined that the deeds from the Development Company to the homeowners did not explicitly retain in the Development Company any rights except as might pertain to nontributary ground water underneath the homeowners' lots.