Domestic wells in Garfield County

5,381 of the 12,165 well permits in Garfield County — 44.2% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Garfield County holds 2.2% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 2.0% 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

2,793 of the 5,381 permits decreed for domestic in Garfield County ended with a well the Division was told about — 51.9%. And 1,156 expired without one: 21.5%.

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 Garfield County, or need a well drilled?

5,381 well permits are on the Division’s register in Garfield County, 1,156 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 12,165 permits in Garfield County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Household Use Only — Grand 6,408
• Household Use Only — Larimer 6,200
• Domestic — Pueblo 5,760
• Domestic — Chaffee 5,602
• Household Use Only — Boulder 5,582
• Monitoring/sampling — El Paso 5,469
• Domestic — Fremont 5,023
• Monitoring/sampling — Arapahoe 4,924
• Irrigation — Yuma 4,622
• Household Use Only — Summit 4,534
• Domestic — Routt 4,390