Buying Land in Curry County, New Mexico

No confirmed county zoning -- Clovis and Texico zone within their own limits

Curry County's own government records -- its Building Department, Road Department entrance and culvert permit programs, and its 2024 Comprehensive Plan -- did not surface a countywide zoning ordinance document in research, in clear contrast to neighboring Chaves County, which does maintain and publish its own Zoning Ordinance. Clovis and the smaller city of Texico, the county's incorporated municipalities, each administer their own zoning within their city limits, and are not subject to county zoning inside those limits. For rural land outside both cities, the practical local process appears to run through the county's Building Department for construction and the Road Department for driveway/entrance permits, rather than a zoning review. Confirm current zoning status directly with Curry County before relying on this, since it reflects an absence of evidence in public records rather than an explicit "no zoning" statement from the county itself.

The real issue here: PFAS contamination from Cannon Air Force Base

Cannon Air Force Base sits about seven miles west of Clovis, and decades of using PFAS-laden firefighting foam there have created a documented, serious groundwater contamination problem extending well beyond the base's own boundary -- forcing Highland Dairy to euthanize its entire herd after PFAS turned up in its water supply, and a state blood-testing program found PFAS compounds in the large majority of area residents tested. New Mexico has responded with active remediation, including a state-funded project connecting roughly 100 affected Curry County homes to a new water source and a formal NMED-Air Force cleanup agreement, but this is an ongoing, evolving situation, not a resolved one.

For the actual contamination numbers behind this crisis, current OSE well-permitting mechanics for a Curry County well, and the separate Ogallala Aquifer decline question, see our dedicated Wells & Water page -- it goes well beyond what fits here.

Dairy, agriculture, and the base: Curry County's real economic engine

Setting the contamination issue aside, Curry County's land economy runs on two pillars: irrigated agriculture -- dairy farming especially, which accounts for a substantial share of New Mexico's total milk production and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in direct annual revenue, alongside cotton, grain, and cattle feedlot operations -- and Cannon Air Force Base itself, which has an annual economic impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars and is one of the county's largest employers. For a buyer evaluating agricultural land here, that means checking both the underlying water right and well capacity that supports irrigated or dairy operations (the county's farming shifted from dryland to deep-well irrigation in the 1940s) and, given the contamination history above, the water's actual current quality -- rather than assuming a productive-looking irrigated parcel is automatically problem-free.