Domestic wells in Costilla County

1,504 of the 4,256 well permits in Costilla County — 35.3% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Costilla County holds 0.6% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 0.7% of the register overall — so it is under-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

942 of the 1,504 permits decreed for domestic in Costilla County ended with a well the Division was told about — 62.6%. And 279 expired without one: 18.6%.

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 Costilla County, or need a well drilled?

1,504 well permits are on the Division’s register in Costilla County, 279 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 4,256 permits in Costilla County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Household Use Only — Douglas 1,632
• Other — Weld 1,623
• Household Use Only — Weld 1,617
• Stock — El Paso 1,562
• Other — Adams 1,546
• Domestic — San Miguel 1,536
• Other — Jefferson 1,503
• Household Use Only — Lake 1,456
• Domestic — Clear Creek 1,443
• Household Use Only — Garfield 1,443
• Stock — Kit Carson 1,441