Search DWR well permits, step by step

1Open the well permit search

Go to DWR's Well Permits tool. No account, no fee. If you would rather work visually, the DWR Well Permit Map Viewer is the same data on a map and is easier when you know where the property is but not its permit number.

2Search by the best identifier you have

In descending order of reliability:

• Permit number — exact, instant, no ambiguity. It is on the permit document and often on the well's tag.
• Legal description — quarter-quarter, quarter, section, township, range and principal meridian. This is how the state actually organizes wells, and it is the most dependable route when you have the property but not the paperwork.
• Location — county plus address, or the map viewer.
• Owner name — works, but is the least reliable: records carry the contact at the time of permitting, which on an older well is frequently someone who sold the place decades ago.

If you do not have the legal description, get it from the county assessor, or read it off the DWR map viewer.

3Read the status field first

Before anything else, look at the permit's current status. It is the field that tells you whether you are looking at a live authorization or a piece of history, and the vocabulary is unforgiving. Real examples from the records include Application Denied and Well Replaced — Abandonment Required.

A denied application still appears in the database. So does a permit for a well that has been replaced and whose predecessor must be plugged. Neither means the property has a usable well.

4Read the permitted uses — this is the one that matters

The record lists the permitted uses and the permit category. A residential permit showing Domestic use is the common case, and on a parcel under 35 acres it frequently means household use only: drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry. Not the lawn, not the garden, not livestock, not the car.

That limit comes from the statutory presumption that lets small wells be permitted at all C.R.S. § 37-92-602(3)(b)(II)(A), and it is explained in exempt wells and the 35-acre rule. If you are buying a property and intend to irrigate anything, this field is the answer, and it is not negotiable with the seller.

5Check the aquifer and the depth

The record shows the associated aquifers, whether the well is in the Denver Basin, and the total depth. Denver Basin wells are a different legal world — that water is allocated by overlying land ownership rather than by priority, and whether it is nontributary or "not nontributary" changes whether withdrawals need an augmentation plan. See types of water rights.

Depth and the completion record also tell you something practical: an old shallow well in alluvium behaves very differently in a dry year from a deep bedrock well.

6Look at the dates, and mind the gap

Records carry the date the application was received, the date the permit was issued, and the date the well was completed — and they do not always run in the order you expect. It is entirely normal to find a well completed in the nineteenth century with a permit issued last year, because the permit was reissued or the well replaced.

A large gap is not a red flag by itself. An unexplained one is worth asking about.

7Open the full record

Each result links through to its complete permit record, including the construction details and any filed reports. That deep link is the thing to send to your attorney, your lender, or the seller's agent — it is authoritative and it settles arguments.