Buying acreage in El Paso County: water, growth and records

The county’s Water Master Plan is direct about it: the Denver Basin aquifers are the primary water supply sources in El Paso County. There are four of them, stacked one under another: the Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills. The state places the southern edge of the basin around Colorado Springs.

That water is not renewable. The state says so because the aquifers have limited connection to surface water, and the county plan adds that they recharge over centuries, that water levels are declining, and that the cost of pumping keeps rising. The plan also notes that, apart from Colorado Springs Utilities and its partners, water providers in the county rely on Denver Basin and designated basin groundwater for 85 percent of their supply.

Colorado Springs is the exception. Its utility brings renewable water from the Arkansas River basin and from rivers west of the Continental Divide, stored in reservoirs such as Pueblo Reservoir, and it completed the Southern Delivery System pipeline from Pueblo Reservoir in 2016. So a house inside the city and a house on a well five miles out are drawing on very different kinds of water.

When the state decides how much Denver Basin water a piece of land may pump, it assumes a 100-year aquifer life, which works out to limiting average annual withdrawals to one percent of the water under the land.

El Paso County goes further. In 1986 the county commissioners adopted a subdivision rule that Denver Basin groundwater must meet a 300-year standard for unincorporated property not getting water from another source. In the county plan’s own words, whatever the state determines the water right to be, based on a 100-year life, is divided by three to last 300 years.

For a buyer, the point is that a lot in a subdivision served by individual wells was sized around a deliberately conservative estimate of what the ground can supply. It is still a finite supply, and the county plan’s own growth maps expect more 35-acre lots on individual Denver Basin wells east of Falcon.

Three designated groundwater basins supply water to El Paso County residents, according to the county plan: Upper Black Squirrel Creek, Kiowa-Bijou and Upper Big Sandy Creek. The state describes the Upper Black Squirrel Creek basin as generally in the vicinity of Ellicott and Peyton.

Inside a designated basin, groundwater is administered by the Colorado Ground Water Commission rather than the ordinary water rights system, and household wells are permitted as small capacity wells. Under state guidance, most small capacity permits allow up to three dwellings, domestic animal watering and up to one acre of lawn and garden, regardless of parcel size.

Outside a designated basin the more familiar rule applies: an exempt well on a parcel under 35 acres, not in a cluster development, is limited to household use inside one home, with no outdoor use. Which of the two regimes a parcel sits in is the first water question to answer, and the well permit guide explains the permit classes in full.

Eight municipalities in the county supply water to their residents: the cities of Colorado Springs, Fountain and Manitou Springs, and the towns of Monument, Palmer Lake, Calhan, Ramah and Green Mountain Falls. Outside them, water and sewer usually come from a special district. The county plan names, among others, Cherokee, Meridian, Woodmen Hills, Paint Brush Hills and Triview metropolitan districts, and the Woodmoor and Donala water and sanitation districts.

A district connection changes the questions rather than ending them. Ask what the tap fee is and whether it has been paid, what the district charges each year, and what its own supply is. Most of these districts pump the same Denver Basin aquifers a private well would, and the county plan singles out the Falcon area for its reliance on them and on the over-appropriated Upper Black Squirrel Creek alluvium.

The county plan expected growth to follow the pattern already on the ground: larger-lot subdivisions in the north of the county, and denser suburban building in and around Falcon and Fountain. It notes that Banning Lewis Ranch, over 24,000 acres forming most of Colorado Springs’ eastern boundary, will take most of the city’s suburban growth, and that county development could keep leapfrogging it eastward.

Using state demographer projections, the plan expected the county’s population to grow about 32 percent to roughly 971,440 by 2040, and to approach 1.2 million by 2060. Those are projections from a plan dated February 2019, not counts, but they explain why the fringe of the county looks the way it does.

Fast growth at the edge is why infrastructure arrived unevenly. A newer subdivision may be on a metropolitan district with its own debt and mill levy, the older acreage next to it on a private well and septic, and a pocket closer in may be unincorporated county surrounded by city. The metro district guide covers what a district levy means for the tax bill.

Every one of the questions above has a public record behind it, and most take one search or one call. The table sets out where each answer lives.

Two recent changes are worth knowing. Since January 1, 2024, a septic permit application has to be submitted by a licensed installer. And from July 11, 2026, the county no longer requires a septic inspection when a property sells: the certified inspection is now voluntary unless the health department requires one, for example on a change of use. A buyer who wants the system inspected has to ask for it in the contract.