Chapter 12 - § 12.8 • DRAINAGE EASEMENTS

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 12.8 • DRAINAGE EASEMENTS

Although drainage easements differ from access easements in that drainage easements cannot be used for physical access by humans or their vehicles, these types of easements can be important for the use of upstream property and inconvenient, frustrating, and even dangerous to the downstream property. In addition, these easements can arise with no documentation. Merely the flow of water can create a drainage easement.

The owner of upstream property has a natural easement on downstream land for drainage of surface water flowing in its natural course. "The upstream property owner may alter natural drainage conditions so long as the water is not sent down in a manner or quantity to do more harm to the downstream land than formerly."¹⁶⁵ Natural drainages are established outside the rules for establishing prescriptive easements.¹⁶⁶ To obtain the right to discharge a ditch onto neighboring property, 18 years is not required. Rather, consent to the ditch's original construction is presumed if the ditch has existed for "any appreciable time."¹⁶⁷

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Notes:

^[165] Bittersweet Farms, Inc. v. Zimbelman, 976 P.2d 326, 328 (Colo. App. 1998).

^[166...