Domestic wells in Douglas County

13,804 of the 22,500 well permits in Douglas County — 61.4% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Douglas County holds 5.7% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 3.7% 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

8,733 of the 13,804 permits decreed for domestic in Douglas County ended with a well the Division was told about — 63.3%. And 1,777 expired without one: 12.9%.

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 Douglas County, or need a well drilled?

13,804 well permits are on the Division’s register in Douglas County, 1,777 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 22,500 permits in Douglas County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — El Paso 28,862
• Domestic — Jefferson 15,063
• Domestic — Weld 14,428
• Household Use Only — Park 14,356
• Household Use Only — Jefferson 13,857
• Monitoring/sampling — Weld 10,978
• Domestic — Elbert 10,857
• Domestic — La Plata 10,644
• Domestic — Adams 9,364
• Monitoring/sampling — Adams 9,123
• Domestic — Boulder 8,225