Domestic wells in Rio Grande County

4,314 of the 9,833 well permits in Rio Grande County — 43.9% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Rio Grande County holds 1.8% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 1.6% 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

2,858 of the 4,314 permits decreed for domestic in Rio Grande County ended with a well the Division was told about — 66.2%. And 511 expired without one: 11.8%.

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 Rio Grande County, or need a well drilled?

4,314 well permits are on the Division’s register in Rio Grande County, 511 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 9,833 permits in Rio Grande County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Garfield 5,381
• Domestic — Fremont 5,023
• Monitoring/sampling — Arapahoe 4,924
• Irrigation — Yuma 4,622
• Household Use Only — Summit 4,534
• Domestic — Routt 4,390
• Domestic — Logan 4,286
• Domestic — Gunnison 4,179
• Monitoring/sampling — Boulder 3,864
• Domestic — Alamosa 3,719
• Domestic — Morgan 3,592