Opinion ID: 2543798
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Water Quality Caselaw

Text: It is true, as Denver argues, that Colorado water law has historically focused on water quantity issues so that the law regarding water quality is not well developed. See Vranesh's, supra at 471. Notwithstanding the lack of focus on water quality issues, we have protected water quality to the extent necessary to preserve the water's suitability for the uses of appropriators. See Slide Mines, Inc. v. Left Hand Ditch Co., 102 Colo. 69, 73, 77 P.2d 125, 127 (1938) (finding that extraneous matter introduced into a stream by farmers that did not unfavorably affect the use of the water they were entitled to make but was beneficial to it did not constitute pollution in a legal sense). Upon rehearing its original decision in Wilmore v. Chain O'Mines, Inc., 96 Colo. 319, 44 P.2d 1024 (1934), this court defined pollution as an impairment, with attendant injury, to the use of water that [downstream appropriators] are entitled to make. Unless the introduction of extraneous matter so unfavorably affects such use, the condition created is short of pollution. In reality, the thing forbidden is injury. Thus, Chain O'Mines established a common law theory based on the prior appropriation doctrine that prohibits the discharge of contaminates into streams where doing so makes the water unsuitable for an appropriator's normal use of the water. In addition, we concluded that injury occurred where the Game and Fish Commission's diversion of water through a fish hatchery rendered the water unfit for Farmers Irrigation Company's normal irrigation and domestic use. See Game & Fish Comm'n v. Farmers Irr. Co., 162 Colo. 301, 426 P.2d 562 (1967); Farmers Irr. Co. v. Game & Fish Comm'n, 149 Colo. 318, 369 P.2d 557 (1962).