Everyone told me to check the water rights before closing, and I did. Senior priority date, solid decree, paper looked perfect. What nobody told me to investigate was the ditch company's delivery schedule and how my headgate fit into the rotation.
Turned out the lateral serving my new ground was last in the rotation on a system that ran eight-day cycles. In a normal year, manageable. In my first dry July on that place, I watched alfalfa go into drought stress waiting three extra days because senior users upstream were taking full turns first.
The water right was real. The delivery was structurally disadvantaged. Those are two completely different things, and no title search will show you the second one.
Before you close on any irrigated ground, talk to the ditch rider, not just the ditch company board. The rider knows which laterals run slow, which headgates have chronic leakage losses, and which rotations always run behind.
Has anyone else found that delivery infrastructure problems hit harder than the paper water rights themselves? Curious whether this is a Colorado problem or shows up in other prior appropriation states too.