## Facts

- Several well owners operated irrigated farms in the South Platte River Basin using decreed irrigation wells in an overappropriated tributary system.
- Colorado law treats tributary well pumping in overappropriated basins as presumptively injuring senior appropriators unless out-of-priority depletions are replaced under an approved plan for augmentation.
- Statutory changes required augmentation plans to be decreed by the water court rather than approved administratively by the State Engineer.
- The augmentation entity the well owners relied on ceased operations, leaving the wells without an effective decreed augmentation plan.
- In 2006, the State Engineer issued cease-and-desist orders requiring the well owners to stop pumping until a decreed augmentation plan was entered.
- The well owners complied but alleged the curtailment made their farming operations economically worthless and filed an inverse condemnation action seeking just compensation.

## Issues

1. Whether inverse condemnation claims premised on curtailment of decreed well pumping are “water matters” within the water court’s exclusive jurisdiction.
2. Whether a curtailment order barring out-of-priority pumping absent a decreed augmentation plan effects a taking requiring compensation under the Colorado Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the well owners’ claims.
- The claims were “water matters” because they depended on the scope and administration of the well owners’ decreed rights and the State Engineer’s enforcement of priority administration.
- No compensable taking occurred because the well owners’ property interest did not include a right to pump out of priority without replacing depletions through an approved augmentation plan.

## Legal Principles

- Claims predicated on the right to use water under a decree, and on state administration of that right, fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the water court.
- A decreed well right in a tributary system is a right to divert a quantified amount for beneficial use subject to priority administration, availability, and protection of senior rights.
- Enforcement of statutory and doctrinal limits inherent in a water right—such as the requirement to prevent injury through a decreed augmentation plan—does not constitute a taking of a legally cognizable property interest.
- Economic loss from lawful curtailment does not establish inverse condemnation absent deprivation of a property interest the claimant is legally entitled to exercise.

## Conclusion

The court held that the well owners’ dispute was a water matter for the water court and that curtailment for lack of a decreed augmentation plan did not take property, because the asserted entitlement to pump out of priority was outside the scope of their vested water rights.


Kobobel v. State Dep’t of Nat. Res., 249 P.3d 1127 (Colo. 2011)