Domestic wells in Archuleta County

2,053 of the 3,805 well permits in Archuleta County — 54.0% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Archuleta County holds 0.8% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 0.6% of the register overall — so it is over-represented in this use.

Domestic means household water, and usually a little more — the commonest decreed use in Colorado by a wide margin.

What happened to these permits

1,297 of the 2,053 permits decreed for domestic in Archuleta County ended with a well the Division was told about — 63.2%. And 457 expired without one: 22.3%.

An expired permit is the trap in a rural sale. A seller can produce a permit that lapsed years ago, and a permit is not a water right — the two are separate, and a purchase turns on both. What an expired permit does and does not mean.

Buying land in Archuleta County, or need a well drilled?

2,053 well permits are on the Division’s register in Archuleta County, 457 of them expired. This site tells you what a permit says; it does not drill, and it is not advice on a water right. Tell us where and we pass the request to drillers and water-rights advisers working in Colorado.

We take no commission and we recommend no driller. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.

The permits

Part of a bigger picture: all 3,805 permits in Archuleta County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Las Animas 2,270
• Industrial — La Plata 2,234
• Domestic — Moffat 2,208
• Stock — Elbert 2,187
• Domestic — Eagle 2,110
• Domestic — Washington 2,080
• Monitoring/sampling — Douglas 2,001
• Domestic — Kit Carson 1,983
• Stock — Washington 1,958
• Irrigation — Adams 1,926
• Domestic — Delta 1,889