By Jerd Smith
In 1881, Colorado's first State Engineer, Eugene Stimson, rode 30 miles each way on horseback between the Big Thompson River and the Cache La Poudre checking gauges he had set in the rivers. He carried a tent and a portable drafting table.
Read more: A Stream of En-Gaugement: Water measurement's ongoing evolution
By Allen Best
If water were eternally abundant in Colorado, no dams would be needed for storage, their structural safety in annual need of inspection. Anyone could drill a well because, well, why not? Monitoring the allocation of streams, rivers and ditches would be unnecessary. Interstate water compacts—what are those?
Read more: Water's Top Cop: Policing scarcity from the State Engineer's Office
Westerners prudently store water from each spring's abundant runoff to use throughout the year. Colorado now has about 2,000 reservoirs statewide, which the Division of Water Resources must administer. In an attempt to informally codify the state's reservoir administration practices, Water Division 1 Assistant Division Engineer Claudia Engelmann and Division Engineer Jim Hall, along with Water Division 5 Division Engineer Alan Martellaro, assembled a set of guidelines intended to provide a common starting point for the many difficult decisions DWR staff must make every day. The guidelines are currently being reviewed by State Engineer Dick Wolfe. Here is a sampling of the issues covered:
By Jerd Smith
Erin Light oversees the remote, lush Yampa River Basin, one of the last places in the American West where almost anyone can take water without a water right. Because of increasing use, however, the river is slowly being integrated into the state's regulatory system, and Light, the first and only female division engineer in the state, is charged with bringing the wild-charging Yampa in line.