Monitoring/sampling wells in Douglas County

2,001 of the 22,500 well permits in Douglas County — 8.9% — are decreed for monitoring/sampling.

How this group compares

Douglas County holds 2.2% of Colorado’s 91,022 monitoring/sampling permits, while holding 3.7% of the register overall — so it is under-represented in this use.

Monitoring/sampling means not a water supply at all — a hole drilled to watch the groundwater. These sit on the same register and are not wells anyone drinks from.

What happened to these permits

817 of the 2,001 permits decreed for monitoring/sampling in Douglas County ended with a well the Division was told about — 40.8%. And 589 expired without one: 29.4%.

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 Douglas County, or need a well drilled?

2,001 well permits are on the Division’s register in Douglas County, 589 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 monitoring/sampling permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Industrial — La Plata 2,234
• Domestic — Moffat 2,208
• Stock — Elbert 2,187
• Domestic — Eagle 2,110
• Domestic — Washington 2,080
• Domestic — Archuleta 2,053
• Domestic — Kit Carson 1,983
• Stock — Washington 1,958
• Irrigation — Adams 1,926
• Domestic — Delta 1,889
• Not stated — Jefferson 1,872