Domestic wells in Chaffee County

5,602 of the 10,321 well permits in Chaffee County — 54.3% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Chaffee County holds 2.3% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 1.7% 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

3,676 of the 5,602 permits decreed for domestic in Chaffee County ended with a well the Division was told about — 65.6%. And 637 expired without one: 11.4%.

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 Chaffee County, or need a well drilled?

5,602 well permits are on the Division’s register in Chaffee County, 637 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 10,321 permits in Chaffee County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Arapahoe 6,656
• Irrigation — Weld 6,468
• Domestic — Park 6,433
• Household Use Only — Grand 6,408
• Household Use Only — Larimer 6,200
• Domestic — Pueblo 5,760
• Household Use Only — Boulder 5,582
• Monitoring/sampling — El Paso 5,469
• Domestic — Garfield 5,381
• Domestic — Fremont 5,023
• Monitoring/sampling — Arapahoe 4,924