Domestic wells in Pitkin County

2,295 of the 4,805 well permits in Pitkin County — 47.8% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Pitkin County holds 0.9% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 0.8% 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

1,213 of the 2,295 permits decreed for domestic in Pitkin County ended with a well the Division was told about — 52.9%. And 419 expired without one: 18.3%.

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 Pitkin County, or need a well drilled?

2,295 well permits are on the Division’s register in Pitkin County, 419 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 4,805 permits in Pitkin County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Irrigation — Kit Carson 2,480
• Irrigation — Saguache 2,476
• Irrigation — Rio Grande 2,407
• Commercial — El Paso 2,402
• Stock — Weld 2,360
• Domestic — Summit 2,336
• Domestic — Mesa 2,287
• Domestic — Las Animas 2,270
• Industrial — La Plata 2,234
• Domestic — Moffat 2,208
• Stock — Elbert 2,187