Is there a well permit on this Colorado land — and is it still good?

Type the permit number or the receipt number. 600,017 permits, and the answer includes the two things a buyer actually needs: whether the well was ever built, and how deep it had to go.

Working through a list of parcels? Pro access resolves permits in bulk, and the datasets are published with their prices — from USD 300 a month for the stream of changes.

98,256 permits were issued and the well was never dug

That is 16.4% of the register. A Colorado well permit lapses if the well is not constructed in the time allowed, and this is the trap in a rural land sale: a seller produces a permit, and the permit died years ago. What an expired permit does and does not mean.

How deep you have to drill is not the same everywhere

It is not close. County medians on this register run from 30 feet to 360 feet — and depth is what a well costs, because a driller charges by the foot. The figures below are medians over the permits where the Division was told; a mean would be carried away by a few industrial holes.

Depth and yield in all 63 counties with enough permits to measure.

A permit says what the water may be used for

This is the part people get wrong. A well permit is not a general right to water: household use only means inside the house — no lawn, no livestock, no garden.

What none of it measures

Depth is on the file for 63 % of permits, yield for 23 %, static water level for 49 %. A blank is not a zero, and no page here fills one in. Nothing in this register says whether a well still produces today.

Where they are

All 63 counties · Depth and yield · Expired permits · Decreed uses · Aquifers · How this site is built