Water rights

Front Range water providers released water downstream to test how to get it to the state line in the event of a Colorado River Compact call.

State health officials will request to fast-track authority over streams left unprotected after a 2020 rollback of Clean Water Act.

Pitkin County took the final step in a years-long effort to get more water into the often water-short upper Roaring Fork River.

As California’s seasons become warmer and drier, state officials are pondering whether the water rights permitting system needs revising.

Colorado water officials are considering whether to designate the increasingly stressed Yampa River as over-appropriated.

Imposing hefty taxes on speculative water sales, requiring that water rights purchased by investors be held for several years before they can be resold, and requiring special state approval of such sales are three ideas that might help Colorado protect its water resources from speculators.

State engineers in the Arkansas River basin are beginning to crack down on more than 10,000 ponds without legal water rights, which they say are harming senior rights holders.

Where groundwater gives way to warm springs, a fight continues over building a new desert town outside Las Vegas.

As climate change and overuse reduce water supplies, the gap between “paper water” (the legal right to use water) and “actual water” (what’s available) is widening.

In Diamond Valley, Nevada, farmers are looking to protect their future — and testing the limits of the state’s water laws.