Steven O. Sims

Steve Sims focuses on western water law, particularly water court litigation, water acquisition strategy and water rights transactions. Over a career spanning more than 40 years, he has led 750 water litigations and more than 20 Supreme Court appeals. His work includes representing municipal utilities, industrial and mining projects, oil and gas developments, and real estate developments in water adjudications and permitting.

Steve represents clients in the Colorado Water Courts and before the State Engineer and Groundwater Commission. He also appears before Boards of County Commissioners on 1041 permitting matters. In transactional work, he negotiates, documents and closes water rights acquisitions, including rights for new real estate developments and for fracking in oil and gas developments.

His project experience includes work on the City of Aurora’s $700 million Prairie Waters Project and representation of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission in transferring water rights on the Pecos River. Earlier in his career, Steve served as senior water counsel and first assistant attorney general for the Water Unit of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

Counsel to Serratoga Falls, LLC, which is owned by a local private equity company, and an individual executive in defense of seventeen claims brought in the Division One Water Court in Greeley, Colorado, which sought over $750,000 in damages, disgorgement of profits, and injunctions preventing water use and property development in a 500-home subdivision in Larimer County. Our team defended against Plaintiffs’ claims brought and filed a counterclaim to obtain court permission to underground an open ditch running through the property. After a seven-day bench trial, the Court dismissed all of Plaintiffs’ seventeen claims, approved the proposed underground pipeline, and awarded attorneys’ fees and costs jointly and severally against Plaintiffs and their attorney.

• J.D., 1979, University of Puget Sound School of Law
• B.A., 1975, University of Colorado

• Colorado
• New Mexico
• U.S. District Court, District of Colorado
• U.S. Supreme Court
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
• U.S. District Court, District of New Mexico

• 5280 Top Lawyers, 2015-2026
• Chambers USA, 2011-2014, 2026
• Appointed by Governor Ritter to Colorado Water and Power Authority Board of Directors
• The Best Lawyers in America, 2010-2027
• Colorado Super Lawyers
• Law Week Colorado, Barrister’s Best, 2023

• Colorado Water Congress State Affairs
• Executive Council, Colorado Bar Association, Water Law Section

• Draft Updates to the Colorado Water Plan

  Brownstein Client Alert, August 17, 2022