David Hajoglou sat on the rocks next to a rushing stretch of river in Golden, Colo. As he scouted a kayak route through the riffles and waves, he thought back to the first time he ever visited this spot, the Clear Creek Whitewater Park, nearly 20 years ago.
“Boy howdy, did it kick my butt,” he said. “I swam a few times. I chased a kayak probably all the way to 10th Street there, whatever the cross street is, and it was just a riot.”
Hajoglou — better known as “Hojo” in the local kayak scene — has come back to this stretch of Clear Creek more times than he can count since that first rowdy run through the waves. And since then, the park itself has grown in stature.
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It’s a series of rocks strategically placed in the river to create waves, pools and eddies that form a watery playground for kayakers like Hojo. It holds a legendary status among Colorado’s paddlers and river advocates. This stretch of Clear Creek was the first to receive legal protections that guarantee a certain amount of water will always flow through it. That was the result of a high-profile legal battle nearly 25 years ago.
Those protections gave recreators some legal footing — the same kind of status long held by cities and farms. And as a result, they helped put Colorado on the map as a destination for people who want to play in rivers.
That rings true for Hojo and other kayakers.
“The second you get hooked on it,” he said, “You look at this park and you get excited for the prospect of getting on moving water. It's very addicting.”
In the two-plus decades since the courtroom showdown that set up protections for water used by recreators, more than a dozen whitewater parks have been built across the state. Now, river advocates are asking if those protections should change to meet the moment.
Making room for boaters
If you’ve ever questioned just how seriously Colorado takes its water, just let attorney Glenn Porzak tell you about the time he went to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2001. He was arguing for the protections that would make today’s Clear Creek Whitewater Park possible.
“When I walked in, every seat in the Supreme Court chambers was taken,” he said. “They brought in a whole host of extra chairs. There were people just standing in the aisles.”
Porzak, now a veteran in the Colorado water law scene, was there to push back on the state’s attempt to outlaw recreational water rights. Cities across the state were looking at a sharp rise in the popularity of whitewater kayaking, and trying to draw people to their rivers. But first they needed to make sure the water wouldn’t stop flowing because someone upstream wanted to pull that water away.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board, or CWCB, was worried that adding recreation into the already contentious arena of water ownership would upset the status quo.
“They really saw this as a threat,” Porzak said. “You would think, in a state like Colorado, water for these various recreation uses … would be something that the state would really embrace. But I've never believed that that was the case.”
Porzak’s side won, and enabled a boom of those so-called whitewater parks. If a Colorado city wants to bring kayakers and their money to town, they can throw some big rocks in the river and apply for a “recreational in-channel diversion,” or RICD. Basically, if the river is ever close to flowing too low for boaters, they could have the legal muscle to force upstream users to leave some water in the stream.
Time to evolve
These legal rights are limited in their capacity. They cannot add water to the river. They can tell other users to stop taking water out of the river. A RICD does not necessarily improve river conditions for recreational water users, but makes sure they don’t get worse in the future.
Basically, it can play defense, but not offense.
Despite that ability to play defense, RICDs rarely ever flex their legal muscles. In the two-and-a-half decades since recreational water rights holders have had the option to force another user to leave some water in the river, only three of Colorado’s 21 holders have ever done so.
Taking that option is called “placing a call.” The Clear Creek park in Golden did it for about two weeks in 2005. Longmont did it in 2023 and 2024, and Littleton has placed a call for at least a few days every year since 2016. None of the RICDs on the Western Slope have ever done so.
Hattie Johnson, southern Rockies restoration director at the advocacy group American Whitewater, called the RICD designation a “necessary and important first step.”
“I would really like to see the state continue to evolve to really meet the realities of what recreation is like on Colorado's rivers,” she said. “And I think there's plenty of room for that evolution to happen.”
Johnson and other river experts think that evolution could happen in a few ways. Most of them have to do with making it easier to get a recreational water right.
Right now, for a non-state entity to get any kind of water right, there is a legal requirement to divert the river or somehow change the flow of water. That’s why recreational water rights in Colorado are tied to whitewater parks, where rocks are used to modify the river’s course.
Kate Ryan, who has worked in Colorado water law for more than a decade, said putting boulders in the water in order to establish a protected stretch of river “seems like a legal fiction.”
“You just have to do something to the river in order to get a water right,” she said. “That just doesn't seem practical, and it's really expensive. I think that could go away.”
These river parks often attract more than just kayakers. Visit any one of the stretches of river protected by a RICD and you will likely see swimmers, tubers, toe-dipping sunbathers and the occasional angler.
Those people are able to access protected stretches of river as a convenient side effect of the RICD laws. Ryan, now the executive director of the Colorado Water Trust, said protections should be expanded to include a broader definition of “recreation.”
“You can go put your foot in the stream in lots of places,” she said, “But you don't have a way of preserving that right into the future.”
Ryan and others also suggest lowering the barrier to get a RICD in the first place. Currently, anyone looking to get legal protection for their water needs to go to the state’s water court. That’s a standard practice for any kind of water user in the state — whether they’re hoping to open a kayak park, irrigate crops or send water through their town’s kitchen faucets.
But there’s an extra hurdle that most types of water users don’t face. Applicants for a RICD also have to answer a long list of questions for the CWCB — the state’s top water regulator.
“We haven't had RICD applications in a pretty long time,” Ryan said. “So there must be a pretty high bar that's been established to keep more of the entities who could apply for them from applying for them … Nobody wants to go to water court for anything. It's just incredibly expensive and time-consuming. I think adding an administrative layer onto that is too much — possibly unconstitutional.”
Saving a spot in line
Despite the relative legal toothlessness of RICDs, river experts say they will get more powerful in the future.
Water law in Colorado and much of the arid West is governed by the concept of “prior appropriation.” It basically means that the first person to use water will be the last to lose it in times of shortage. If you were first in line, your access to a specified quantity of water is almost legally untouchable. People who were granted the right to use water more recently are at the end of the proverbial line, and have to stop using theirs first.
RICDs give their owners a place in that line.
While most RICDs are relatively junior to other users in the state, more new users will likely get in line behind them as time goes on.
The city of Steamboat Springs owns a RICD to protect some popular river recreation spots along the Yampa River. It has never put out a call, but knows that it might have to some day in the future, if someone new wants to take water out of the river.
“I think that the RICD will become a more important tool in the toolbox and an option that the city could potentially exercise in the future,” said Julie Baxter, Steamboat Springs’ water resources manager.
Baxter also pointed out that the RICD will become more powerful if another force takes water out of the river: climate change. With less water to go around, anyone with a legal claim to the river will have some added muscle to keep their water flowing.
“I think it will become more important down the road with a hotter and drier future,” she said.
This story is part of a series on river recreation in Colorado, produced by Aspen Journalism, KUNC and The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder. KUNC’s Colorado River coverage is supported by the Walton Family Foundation.
