Industrial wells in La Plata County

2,234 of the 18,518 well permits in La Plata County — 12.1% — are decreed for industrial.

How this group compares

La Plata County holds 25.8% of Colorado’s 8,665 industrial permits, while holding 3.1% of the register overall — so it is over-represented in this use.

Industrial means water for an industrial process.

What happened to these permits

1,920 of the 2,234 permits decreed for industrial in La Plata County ended with a well the Division was told about — 85.9%. And 16 expired without one: 0.7%.

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 La Plata County, or need a well drilled?

2,234 well permits are on the Division’s register in La Plata County, 16 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 18,518 permits in La Plata County, and every industrial permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Commercial — El Paso 2,402
• Stock — Weld 2,360
• Domestic — Summit 2,336
• Domestic — Pitkin 2,295
• Domestic — Mesa 2,287
• Domestic — Las Animas 2,270
• Domestic — Moffat 2,208
• Stock — Elbert 2,187
• Domestic — Eagle 2,110
• Domestic — Washington 2,080
• Domestic — Archuleta 2,053