## Facts

- Fort Lyon Canal Co. (FLCC) operates canals and reservoirs holding decreed Arkansas River direct-flow and storage rights used to irrigate about 93,000 acres in southeastern Colorado.
- High Plains A & M, LLC and Wollert Enterprises, Inc. acquired FLCC shares and filed change-of-water-right applications in Water Division 2.
- High Plains sought to shift historical irrigation uses to any of more than fifty potential new uses (including municipal and industrial) across twenty-eight Colorado counties.
- The applications did not identify specific end users, contracts, or firm commitments for delivery of the water.
- The applications also did not identify specific parcels or definite locations where the changed water would be applied.
- Numerous water users and agencies objected, arguing the requests were speculative and too indefinite to assess no-injury and beneficial-use requirements.

## Issues

1. Whether Colorado’s anti-speculation doctrine applies to applications to change an existing water right, not only to applications for new appropriations.
2. Whether a change application that does not identify specific users and definite places of beneficial use satisfies statutory requirements governing change decrees and appropriations.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment dismissing the change applications.
- The court held the anti-speculation doctrine applies to change-of-water-right proceedings.
- The court held a change applicant must show an actual beneficial use to be made at an identified location or locations under the proposed decree.
- Because High Plains proposed broad menus of uses and counties without specific users or places of use, the applications were too indefinite to evaluate injury to vested rights and too speculative to satisfy beneficial-use requirements.
- Dismissal was without prejudice, permitting refiling when definite locations for beneficial use can be identified.

## Legal Principles

- Colorado water rights and changes to those rights are conditioned on actual beneficial use; the anti-speculation doctrine enforces that requirement.
- A change-of-water-right application seeking a change in type and place of use must be anchored to reasonably definite beneficial uses and identifiable locations.
- A change proceeding cannot be used to obtain the functional equivalent of a new, marketable water right reserved for unspecified future users and uses.
- When an application is so expansive and indeterminate that a water court cannot apply no-injury and beneficial-use requirements, dismissal is proper, including at summary judgment.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed dismissal of High Plains’s change applications because they sought open-ended future uses in numerous counties without identifying specific users or definite places of beneficial use, violating the anti-speculation doctrine and preventing a lawful no-injury and beneficial-use determination; the dismissal was without prejudice to refiling with concrete, location-specific plans for beneficial use.


High Plains A & M, LLC v. Se. Colo. Water Conservancy Dist., 120 P.3d 710 (Colo. 2005)