Robert E. Mace, Ph.D., P.G. reports that if groundwater management in Texas were his girlfriend, our relationship status on Facebook would be “It’s complicated.” Sure, there would be the romantic candlelit evenings near bubbling springs with heated whispers about transmissivities and boundary fluxes, but there’s a lot more going on (cough, cough) beneath the surface than sweet nothings. A lot more. Depending on which part of the state we were in, the relationship could be quite rocky (even if the aquifers weren’t) if not completely nonexistent (”Why are you giving me the silent treatment?”). I’m not proud of this, but we would almost certainly (occasionally) raise our voices at each other, disturbing our neighbors and my cat (hypothetically named, for this paper, Spring). Indeed, groundwater management in Texas is complicated: The resource is complicated, the history is complicated, the law is complicated, and, for the time being, a certain level of legal uncertainty complicates everything. The purpose of this paper is to describe, as simply as possible, how groundwater management currently works in Texas and how we got there. If all you care about is the here and now, here’s the bottom-line recipe for getting you along your merry groundwater management way:
- Are you in a groundwater conservation district, a subsidence district, or the Edwards Aquifer Authority?
- If the answer is NO, then the Rule of Capture rules, which means you can drill wherever you want and pump whatever you want whenever you want unless (a) a previous owner has severed the groundwater rights from your surface estate [in other words, someone else owns the groundwater beneath your property], (b) you are inside a city’s boundaries [in which case you should check with the city on how it may restrict groundwater pumping], (c) you damage someone’s property through groundwater-pumping induced land subsidence [and someone sues you for it], (d) you are wasting the water [shame on you], or (e) you are pumping it specifically to damage your neighbor [you’re a piece of work, aren’t you?].
- If the answer is YES, then you need to check with the appropriate district or authority (including the city if you are inside a city) to find out what you can and can’t do.
- Regardless of whether you answered YES or NO, you should keep close tabs on case law and the legislature (and the city, if applicable) due to rule changes and the general uncertainty of water law and what regulating bodies can and can’t do. For the rest of y’all, the juicy gossip, heartbreak, uplifting victories, and crushing defeats are below. I should note that any one of these sections warrants their own paper-length description and analysis. While I’ve strived to keep things accurate, I’ve also attempted to keep things short and understandable.
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