Legal
Disclaimer
This service organizes and analyzes public records to support property research and preliminary due diligence. We are direct about its limits, because a water report that overstates its own authority is worse than no report.
What this service is not
- Legal advice.
- A title opinion, or any determination of water-right ownership.
- Engineering advice.
- Hydrogeologic certification.
- A guarantee of well depth.
- A guarantee of groundwater availability.
- A guarantee of well yield.
- Certification of drinking-water quality or safety.
- A drilling permit, or any form of regulatory approval.
The limits of the underlying records
We use official state and federal datasets, and those datasets have real limitations that carry through into our analysis. Well records vary in completeness and age. Well coordinates are sometimes derived from a legal land description rather than measured, and can be off by a quarter-quarter section. Recorded yields come from short tests at the time of completion. Water-right ownership on file with DNRC does not update automatically when property changes hands.
Most importantly, Montana publishes no authoritative link between a parcel and a water right. Every water-right association we present is a potential match based on mapped geography, and place-of-use records are mapped by legal land description at a resolution typically coarser than a single parcel.
We also cannot determine whether a property lies within a stream depletion zone, because no authoritative public map of those boundaries was available to us. That matters, because Montana applies stricter exempt-well thresholds inside one.
Estimates are estimates
Where we estimate — most notably a likely drilling-depth range — the figure is our inference from comparable records, labelled as an estimate, presented as a range rather than a point, and accompanied by a confidence rating. Subsurface conditions vary over short distances, and no analysis of neighbouring wells can tell you with certainty what will be found on a specific site.
Verify before you rely
Before drilling, purchasing, or relying on a water right, verify findings with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, and qualified professionals — a licensed well driller, a hydrogeologist, a water-right consultant, or an attorney, as the situation warrants.
Data is provided as-is, without warranty of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. Decisions made in reliance on this service are your own.