Municipal
9,424 of Colorado’s 600,017 well permits are decreed for this — 1.6%.
What this use allows
Municipal means a public water supply.
| Measurement | Median | 90th percentile | Colorado median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depth | 190 ft | 1544 ft | 148 ft — deeper here (3,298 permits, 35 %) |
| Yield | 100 gpm | 690 gpm | 10 gpm — higher here (1,367 permits, 15 %) |
| Static water level | 50 ft | 556 ft | 58 ft — lower here (2,751 permits, 29 %) |
Where they are
| County | Permits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Douglas | 1,698 | 18.0% |
| El Paso | 1,003 | 10.6% |
| Arapahoe | 889 | 9.4% |
| Adams | 835 | 8.9% |
| Jefferson | 465 | 4.9% |
| Weld | 380 | 4.0% |
| Eagle | 278 | 2.9% |
| Garfield | 271 | 2.9% |
| Summit | 199 | 2.1% |
| Boulder | 187 | 2.0% |
| Elbert | 175 | 1.9% |
| Pueblo | 156 | 1.7% |
| Teller | 151 | 1.6% |
| Rio Blanco | 146 | 1.5% |
| Grand | 134 | 1.4% |
| Saguache | 133 | 1.4% |
| Denver | 126 | 1.3% |
| Routt | 123 | 1.3% |
| La Plata | 121 | 1.3% |
| Prowers | 117 | 1.2% |
| Morgan | 108 | 1.1% |
| Pitkin | 102 | 1.1% |
| Larimer | 93 | 1.0% |
| Gunnison | 91 | 1.0% |
| San Miguel | 88 | 0.9% |
| Otero | 87 | 0.9% |
| Chaffee | 76 | 0.8% |
| Park | 74 | 0.8% |
| Logan | 68 | 0.7% |
| Fremont | 55 | 0.6% |
What happened to these permits
2,483 of the 9,424 permits decreed for municipal ended with a well the Division was told about — 26.3%. And 2,295 expired without one: 24.4%.
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.
| Status | Permits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Well Constructed | 2,483 | 26.3% |
| Permit Expired | 2,295 | 24.4% |
| Application Denied | 1,620 | 17.2% |
| Application Information Requested | 709 | 7.5% |
| Well Abandoned | 614 | 6.5% |
| Permit Canceled | 396 | 4.2% |
| Permit Issued | 363 | 3.9% |
| Application Received | 239 | 2.5% |
| Application Withdrawn | 151 | 1.6% |
| Final Permit | 144 | 1.5% |
Buying land in Colorado, or need a well drilled?
9,424 well permits are on the Division’s register in Colorado, 2,295 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 other decreed uses
- Domestic 243,096
- Household Use Only 105,372
- Monitoring/sampling 91,022
- Irrigation 47,689
- Stock 31,328
- Commercial 22,356
- Other 18,823
- Not stated 15,448
- Industrial 8,665
- Geothermal 3,815