Basalt Water Conservancy District

The Basalt Water Conservancy District (BWCD) was created in 1963 for the purpose of conserving, developing and stabilizing water supplies for the benefit of users within the Roaring Fork Valley. Today the District operates a comprehensive water supply plan that provides thousands of Valley residents with dependable legal water supplies. The District’s water rights benefit users who purchase a contract by allowing them to continue to divert water at their well, spring or surface diversion in times of shortage when their use would otherwise be curtailed by an administrative water rights call. The District owns substantial domestic, municipal and agricultural water rights, and maintains several reservoir storage contracts with the US Bureau of Reclamation for the release of water from Ruedi and Green Mountain Reservoirs. 

LRE Water helps the District maintain a legal water supply for current and future contractees. LRE also manages all of the District’s contractees. This includes maintenance of an extensive database that identifies each contractee, their quantity of water, point of diversion and diversion schedule. It also records the contractees actual annual water use. This information is used in annual reporting for the State Engineer and to assess the appropriate contract fees to all users. In addition, LRE  has conducted hydrologic and engineering investigations necessary to help the BWCD implement and expand their water supply program and maintains a geographic information systems (GIS) database on behalf of the District.