Stock wells in El Paso County

1,562 of the 46,491 well permits in El Paso County — 3.4% — are decreed for stock.

How this group compares

El Paso County holds 5.0% of Colorado’s 31,328 stock permits, while holding 7.7% of the register overall — so it is under-represented in this use.

Stock means watering livestock.

What happened to these permits

1,050 of the 1,562 permits decreed for stock in El Paso County ended with a well the Division was told about — 67.2%. And 71 expired without one: 4.5%.

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 El Paso County, or need a well drilled?

1,562 well permits are on the Division’s register in El Paso County, 71 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 46,491 permits in El Paso County, and every stock permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Montrose 1,672
• Stock — Lincoln 1,666
• Other — Denver 1,649
• Household Use Only — Douglas 1,632
• Other — Weld 1,623
• Household Use Only — Weld 1,617
• Other — Adams 1,546
• Domestic — San Miguel 1,536
• Domestic — Costilla 1,504
• Other — Jefferson 1,503
• Household Use Only — Lake 1,456