Domestic wells in Washington County

2,080 of the 5,722 well permits in Washington County — 36.4% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Washington County holds 0.9% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 1.0% of the register overall — so it is under-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

1,382 of the 2,080 permits decreed for domestic in Washington County ended with a well the Division was told about — 66.4%. And 162 expired without one: 7.8%.

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 Washington County, or need a well drilled?

2,080 well permits are on the Division’s register in Washington County, 162 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 5,722 permits in Washington County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Mesa 2,287
• Domestic — Las Animas 2,270
• Industrial — La Plata 2,234
• Domestic — Moffat 2,208
• Stock — Elbert 2,187
• Domestic — Eagle 2,110
• Domestic — Archuleta 2,053
• Monitoring/sampling — Douglas 2,001
• Domestic — Kit Carson 1,983
• Stock — Washington 1,958
• Irrigation — Adams 1,926