## Facts

- A petition initiated a general stream adjudication concerning rights to use water from the South Platte River.
- Multiple appropriators claiming rights to divert and use water from the same river system were involved in the proceeding.
- The matter was presented as a stream-wide adjudication designed to determine the relative rights of competing appropriators on the South Platte River.
- In the adjudication, the court ordered, adjudged, and decreed the respective appropriation rights among the South Platte River appropriators.

## Issues

1. In a general stream adjudication, may the federal district court determine and decree the respective appropriative rights of multiple users drawing from the South Platte River in a single proceeding?

## Decision

- The court proceeded with the general stream adjudication addressing competing claims to South Platte River water.
- The court entered a decree that ordered, adjudged, and decreed the respective appropriation rights among the appropriators involved.
- The decree functioned as a consolidated adjudication of the parties’ relative water-right entitlements on the stream.

## Legal Principles

- A general stream adjudication is a judicial proceeding used to determine, in one case, the relative appropriative rights of multiple claimants to the use of water from the same stream system.
- In such a proceeding, a court may issue a single decree that states the respective rights of the competing appropriators who are before the court.
- The decree in a general stream adjudication serves to fix the parties’ rights as between one another, providing an enforceable determination of relative entitlements to divert and use water from the common source.

## Conclusion

In *In the Matter of a Certain Petition for Adjudication of Rights to the Use of Water* (D. Colo. 1883), the federal district court handled a South Platte River general stream adjudication initiated by petition and entered a decree that ordered, adjudged, and decreed the respective appropriation rights among the competing appropriators before it.


In the Matter of a Certain Petition for Adjudication of Rights to the Use of Water, District Court for the District of Colorado 1883