Environment & Energy

Wonder Why

(6,837 posts)

4. In Texas, underground water is commodity that is owned so you can buy land and its water

Sun Mar 8, 2026, 09:55 AM

Yesterday

rights separately. You can sell the land and keep the water rights just like you can keep the oil rights. The buyer, without water rights, can't drill a well and the water rights owner can pump out all the water he wants even if it affects neighbors.
So every city has to buy more and more underground water as it grows. This happened in the '70s to El Paso and it got so expensive, they decided to pump it from New Mexico. However, there, all water is controlled by the state engineer and he denied their permit. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of NM.
Texas has a stupid system and they are too stupid to fix it.

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