The next Annual Meeting date - time - location is currently TBD.

Historically, the annual meeting for the Swede Ditch Company takes place in March at the Hygiene United Methodist Church. Watch your 2026 dues (sent February or March) for notice of the annual meeting.

If you are a water certificate holder and cannot make the meeting, please remember to fill out your proxy and send that in with someone who will be attending the meeting and can vote in your place.

It’s important that shareholders to attend meetings so that there is a quorum of voters in order to have a productive meeting. If there is no quorum, changes can’t be made to the board of directors or any other part of ditch operations.

There is one vote per certificate.

The Swede brings us early season water. It runs anytime between late April to early July.

The amount of water available to us depends on snowpack and how much snowmelt there is into the St. Vrain River from other watersheds. This varies from season to season.

We never know when the water season will start, or end. It’s safe to say late May-early June, though sometimes it can be earlier.

The water on the ditch runs until the water commissioner cuts off water to the Swede (which is a minor ditch in the whole system of ditches).

The amount of water you get during a season depends on the number of shares you own.

Only CBT (Colorado Big Thompson) water can run in the Swede Ditch system.

CBT water is late season water, that typically comes August-September. If you have CBT shares that you own or lease, you can get additional water to your property later in the water season.

To rent or lease Swede shares, we post any shares that shareholders will not be using in any given water season on the site here as well as shares that folks have available for rent.

We can send a notice to the mailing list about such offerings as well.

Generally speaking, any payments made for the use of the shares are made between the certificate holders. A letter needs to be sent to the Swede Ditch Company detailing the water transfer (if the shares need to be transferred to another gate on the ditch), who is sharing with whom, how many shares are being transferred, and for what year. (These letters to the ditch company will need to be sent annually.)

A fee may be incurred for the transfer.

The City of Boulder will sometimes also have CBT (Colorado Big Thompson) water for lease. Check their website for details. Applications are typically open around April 1.

Water flows from the St. Vrain River, into the Swede Ditch, and then through various gates along the way to get to the laterals (smaller ditches) on your property.

If your gate has multiple users it helps to organize and coordinate amongst yourselves and put in a call for water to the ditch rider.

For example, Gate 8 has 3 groups and a dozen properties that use the water and must coordinate the users on a schedule.

Coordination like this helps maximize the flow on the ditch for all the users over the course of a water run.

Maintaining your ditch and the laterals on your property are the best ways to ensure you are maximizing your irrigation water useage.

Weedwacking, burning, and mowing along your ditches increases waterflow over your fields. Overtime, ditches may also need to be dug back out or re-routed. For that, you can manually dig, bring in a mini-excavator, or find someone with a Ditcher (a special attachment to re-drag your ditches and laterals).

Depending on your needs, there are a few good folks in the area who can help you keep the ditches on your property well maintained. Please reach out via the contact form to get names of folks.

Will McDonough - 720-438-9199

Tyler Sadar - 303-746-5429

This is a gravity fed system and water flows downhill.

CFS = Cubic feet per second (Measures moving water)

AF = Acre Feet (Measures standing water)

1 CFS = 1.983 AF (or 2:1 for conversation purposes)

Volume: 1 acre-foot (AF) of water (water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot) = 325,851 gal.

Flow: 1 cubic foot of water = 7.5 gal or 4 basketballs.

In the springtime, you can monitor several different areas to see what's going on if you look at the DWR site. 

Much of our runoff comes through Buttonrock reservoir. Oftentimes, it’s not until Buttonrock is closer to its capacity (16,000) will they let a lot of water come into the North St.Vrain. 

The North St Vrain below Buttonrock shows the flow out of Buttonrock. 

Then St Vrain at Lyons-Discharge shows the CFS level in the river close to where the Swede intake gate is. Generally this reading needs to be above 200 before the ditch rider can take water into the Swede. 

Lastly, the Swede level itself runs anywhere from 14 to 24cfs depending on how much water the ditch rider has in the Swede and how many gates he has open. 

You can also click on the Swede and see some detail on historical flow.