It’s not just Colorado. Used to live in rural northern California and digging a $25k well (typical price I was quoted) came with no guarantee that water would be found.
$25k is extremely cheap for a well. In my area of Arizona it is common to do well shares, several properties will chip in to drill a $50k-$100k well system, but the cost may be closer to $5k-10K per family.
How deep is the typical well, and is that the primary driver of the cost?
I’m east of the Mississippi and my well is 200 feet deep. But this aquifer is fully allocated; all the new construction has to go to a different aquifer with a typical well depth of 700 feet. Once that is fully allocated, I think there is another one at around 1100 feet.
The price at that depth is dominated by the per foot cost. But inside the per-foot cost is the licensing, regulatory, casing compliance, and permitting compliance.
It's about $50/ft just to drill. After that is electric, the pump, the pressure tanks, burying pipe to enough houses to make each share cheap enough, and the legal cost of setting up a well share.
If you just wanted a well for your own property and merely put a spigot powered by a generator right next to it, you might be able to get away with $35k to start with. If you are looking to do a well share so that it becomes more economically feasible to split costs, I think it would be minimum $50k.
Thanks. Around me I think it would be closer to $15-20k including all the equipment. Permitting is legally capped at $100 and there are about 15 or 20 businesses within 50 miles that do it, so competition abounds.