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Show 476 ADJUDICATION OF WATER RIGHTS IN WATERCOURSES With respect to the relationship between priority numbers in decreed water rights in one water district and those in another district, the priority number had no effect; the decreed priority number established only the priorities among water users within the district in which the adjudication occurred. As between districts, the date of appropriation governed the priority of use.200 The statutes provided:201 The irrigation division engineer * * * shall make out a list of all ditches, canals and reservoirs entitled to appropriations of water within his division, arranging and numbering the same in consecu- tive order, according to the dates of their respective appropriations within his division, and without regard to the number such ditches, canals or reservoirs may bear within their water districts. * * * * * * * [I]f it shall appear that in any district in that division any ditch, canal or reservoir is receiving water whose priority postdates that of the ditch, canal or reservoir in another district as ascertained from [the irrigation division engineer's] register, he shall at once order such postdated ditch, canal or reservoir shut down and the water given to the elder ditch, canal or reservoir. His orders being directed at all times to the enforcement of priority of appropria- tion, according to his tabulated statement of priorities, to the whole division, and without regard to the district within which the ditches, canals and reservoirs may be located. Decrees under the water adjudication statute determined the priorities of the several ditches and the quantities of water awarded thereto; they did not identify ownership of the ditches or who had rights to use the water decreed to the various ditches.202 A general water adjudication proceeding differed Hinderlider, 81 Colo. 468, 256 Pac. 305, 307 (1927); In re Water Rights in Water Dist. No. 17, 85 Colo. 555, 277 Pac. 763,765(1929). 200 With respect to similar former legislation, see Fort Lyon Canal Co. v. Arkansas Valley Sugar Beet & Irrigated Land Co., 76 Colo. 278, 230 Pac. 615 (1924); O'Neill v. Northern Colo. In. Co., 56 Colo. 545, 139 Pac. 536 (1914). See also Chilson, supra note 161, at 86. 2111 Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 148-12-9(2) and 148-12-10(2) (1963), respectively. 202 For a discussion of these or predecessor provisions, see Robinson v. Alfalfa Ditch Co., 89 Colo. 567, 568, 5 Pac. (2d) 1115 (1931). Nothing else could be adjudicated therein. Burke v. South Boulder Canyon Ditch Co., 76 Colo. 354, 356, 231 Pac. 674 (1925). "The title to the canal, its right of way, or whether it owns its right of way, or how it may have acquired it, are matters that cannot be gone into or determined in a statutory adjudication proceeding." Snyder v. Colorado Gold Dredging Co., 58 Colo. 516, 518, 147 Pac. 330 (1915). It was a fundamental rule of water law in Colorado, according to the supreme court in a 1959 decision, that a decree entered in a ditch adjudication proceeding could not and did not determine ownership of the various water priorities awarded to any given ditch. The decree merely awarded the ditch its proper number, adjudicated the quantity of water to which it was entitled under its various priorities, and set forth the dates thereof as related to those of other ditches and reservoirs within the water district. Sounders v. Spina, 140 Colo. 317, 344 Pac. (2d) 469, 473 (1959). Insofar as a decree purported to settle and fix relative rights of individuals to the wate- |