Wells and Water in Curry County, New Mexico

Permitting: OSE District 2, and a basin declared specifically for this county

Every new well in Curry County needs a permit from the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer's Water Rights Division, administered out of District 2 in Roswell (1900 West Second Street, (575) 622-6521). What's specific to Curry is that the OSE has declared a groundwater basin here under its own name -- the "Curry County" underground water basin -- separate from the neighboring Portales and Causey Lingo basins that cover Roosevelt County. That distinction matters because some New Mexico declared basins carry their own administrative guidelines setting stricter transfer restrictions and a tighter definition of impairment than the state's general default rules; confirm with District 2 which specific guidelines apply to the Curry County basin before assuming a water-right transfer or a new permit application will move as simply as it might in an undeclared or unguided basin elsewhere.

A standard statutory domestic well permit under NMSA 1978 Section 72-12-1 authorizes up to 3 acre-feet a year for household, livestock, and garden use, though OSE's 2006 statewide policy shift cut the typical new domestic allowance to roughly 1 acre-foot outside a bona fide agricultural use -- don't assume the older, larger figure applies to a well you'd be permitting today. Once you're drilling, Curry County sits squarely on the Ogallala/High Plains Aquifer formation, and irrigation and domestic wells finished in it need casing specifically designed to keep the aquifer's loose sand from collapsing the borehole -- a construction detail worth confirming with your driller and inspecting in any existing well's completion report before you rely on it.

Quantity: how much time this aquifer actually has left

Separately from any contamination question, the Ogallala/High Plains Aquifer under Curry County is a declining resource, not a stable one. A U.S. Geological Survey potentiometric-surface analysis of the aquifer in the Cannon AFB area of Curry County has documented water-level declines of as much as 1.76 feet per year in parts of the county -- a meaningfully faster local rate than a slow, generalized regional average, and one worth asking about directly for any specific area you're evaluating. This sits alongside the broader Curry/Roosevelt regional finding (New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Bulletin 162, cited on the Curry County hub) that some areas of the shared aquifer had as little as three to five years of usable water left at then-current pumping rates as of a mid-2010s study. Whatever a listing says about an existing well's historical output, ask for its actual current static water level and yield -- not its permit history -- before assuming it will perform the same way in five years.

Quality: the actual numbers behind the Cannon AFB PFAS plume

The Curry County hub flags the Cannon Air Force Base PFAS contamination as a feasibility item; here's what the documented concentrations actually look like, so "contaminated" isn't just an abstract label. In 2018, the Air Force notified the New Mexico Environment Department that on-base monitoring wells showed PFAS concentrations more than 370 times the level federal regulators then considered safe for a lifetime of exposure -- separate reporting has put on-base groundwater PFAS levels as high as roughly 26,200 parts per trillion. For scale, the EPA's first-ever enforceable federal drinking-water standard, finalized in 2024, sets Maximum Contaminant Levels of just 4.0 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS individually (10 ppt for a few related compounds) -- meaning the on-base readings have been documented at multiple thousand times the level now legally enforceable in public drinking water. The off-base plume carrying this contamination into private wells has been mapped at roughly 2.5 to 4 miles from the base depending on the source and survey date, affecting wells used for drinking, irrigation, and dairy operations.

The practical point for a buyer: PFAS contamination isn't something you can rule out by eyeballing distance from the base on a map, since the documented plume extent has grown across different surveys, and PFAS moves with groundwater flow rather than in a uniform circle. If a parcel relies on, or would rely on, a private well anywhere in the greater Clovis/Cannon area, get that specific well tested for PFAS -- NMED has offered free testing in the affected area -- rather than assuming an untested well is fine because it sits outside whatever radius was reported in the article you read.

What to actually check, in order

1. Confirm the parcel's water-right and permit status directly with OSE District 2 in Roswell, including whether it falls in the Curry County declared basin and what basin-specific guidelines (if any) govern transfers and impairment.
2. For an existing well, get its completion report and confirm it was cased appropriately for the Ogallala formation -- don't assume a well drilled decades ago meets current construction standards.
3. Ask for the well's current static water level and yield, not its historical permit figures, given documented local decline rates of up to 1.76 ft/year in parts of the county.
4. If the parcel is anywhere in the greater Clovis/Cannon AFB area, get the well tested for PFAS specifically -- free testing has been available through NMED -- rather than relying on distance from the base as a proxy for safety.
5. Ask NMED directly for the plume's current mapped extent, since reported boundaries have expanded across different surveys and are not a fixed, one-time finding.