Working near the ditch

Here the land is privately owned and the Company has a right-of-way over it. The Company may remove vegetation where that is necessary to operate, clean, maintain or repair the ditch, or to get equipment to it. It gives notice where it can. If a tree on the corridor matters to you, speak to the Company office before the cleaning season rather than after.

Maintaining the ditch — cleaning it, repairing the banks, keeping it able to carry water — is the Agricultural Ditch and Reservoir Company's responsibility, and Colorado law also requires the Company to do it. What is asked of a landowner is the other side of that: not to obstruct the ditch or the corridor the Company works from. If something on your property needs to move for the Company to do this work, the Company will contact you.

Tell the Company as soon as you can — the office number is on this page — and the Company will come and look. Colorado law requires the Company to maintain the ditch banks so that water does not escape and damage neighbouring property, and the Company takes that seriously. Whether the Company is responsible for particular damage depends on the facts of what happened, and the Company will not decide that from a web page. Report it, and someone will be in touch.

The Company needs to be able to get to the ditch and work along it. A fence that crosses the corridor generally needs a gate the Company can use, in a place it can use. Lawn and low planting are usually fine; trees, walls and hard surfaces generally are not. Ask the Company office before you build or plant — agreement in advance is much easier than the alternative, and the Company will tell you what it needs.

Here the land is yours and the Company has a right-of-way across it. Encroachments, unapproved vegetation, fences, or unauthorized structures that impede ditch operations, hydraulic capacity, or maintenance access are subject to immediate removal at the responsible landowner's expense pursuant to C.R.S. § 37-86-103 and Colorado law. Contact the Company office before building anything in the corridor.

Cleaning a ditch produces material that has to go somewhere, and the usual place is along the bank within the corridor the Company works from. On residential stretches the Company will try to let you know before the work and to keep the material off lawns and drives. If it has been left somewhere that is causing a problem, contact the Company office.

The Company has the right to reach the ditch and its banks to operate, clean, maintain and repair it, and to bring in what the work needs. Where the work is planned rather than urgent, the Company aims to give notice. If access across your property is difficult — a locked gate, a narrow side yard — please tell the Company office, because it is easier to arrange in advance than on the day.

A crossing needs the Company's written permission before any work starts. Here the Company has a right-of-way rather than ownership of the ground, so you will need the landowner's agreement as well as the Company's. The Company's permission covers the Company's own rights and nothing more. Ask the office for the crossing application.

Running a line along the ditch corridor, rather than across it, is treated differently from a crossing. Here the Company has a right-of-way rather than ownership of the ground, so a request like this needs the landowner as well as the Company. Contact the Company office before you design around it.

Where a structure was built over or under the ditch, responsibility for it usually depends on the permission it was built under. The Company keeps records of the licences it has granted and will check them for this structure. Contact the Company office and describe the structure and where it is.

The Agricultural Ditch is a private raw water delivery facility, not a public drainage carrier. Directing stormwater, surface runoff, or sump discharges into the ditch without a formal, approved Carrier Agreement is strictly prohibited. Contact the Company office before the design is fixed.

The ditch cannot be moved, piped or lined without the Company's written agreement. That is not a formality: Colorado law does not allow a landowner to alter a ditch easement unilaterally, and the Company has to be able to keep operating and maintaining the ditch afterwards. Where the Company does agree, the work is at the applicant's expense and the new alignment has to be surveyed and conveyed to the Company. Start with the Company office, early — this is the request that takes longest.