Irrigation wells in Rio Grande County

2,407 of the 9,833 well permits in Rio Grande County — 24.5% — are decreed for irrigation.

How this group compares

Rio Grande County holds 5.0% of Colorado’s 47,689 irrigation permits, while holding 1.6% of the register overall — so it is over-represented in this use.

Irrigation means watering land, at the volume the permit allows.

What happened to these permits

1,617 of the 2,407 permits decreed for irrigation in Rio Grande County ended with a well the Division was told about — 67.2%. And 155 expired without one: 6.4%.

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?

2,407 well permits are on the Division’s register in Rio Grande County, 155 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 irrigation permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Household Use Only — La Plata 2,545
• Household Use Only — Gunnison 2,538
• Monitoring/sampling — Mesa 2,522
• Monitoring/sampling — Pueblo 2,493
• Irrigation — Kit Carson 2,480
• Irrigation — Saguache 2,476
• Commercial — El Paso 2,402
• Stock — Weld 2,360
• Domestic — Summit 2,336
• Domestic — Pitkin 2,295
• Domestic — Mesa 2,287