Well Water and the Edwards Aquifer Authority in Bexar County, Texas

A special-law authority, not a typical Water Code groundwater district

Most of the roughly 100 groundwater conservation districts (GCDs) covering parts of Texas were created under the process set out in Water Code Chapter 36, and the Texas hub describes their general shape: local boards, well-permitting authority, spacing and production rules that vary district by district. The Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA), which covers all of Bexar County (along with all of Medina and Uvalde, and parts of Comal, Hays, Caldwell, Guadalupe, and Atascosa Counties), is different -- it was created by its own dedicated state legislation (the Edwards Aquifer Authority Act) rather than through the standard Chapter 36 process, reflecting the aquifer's unusual regional importance as the primary drinking-water source for San Antonio and much of South Central Texas. The practical result for a buyer is that EAA rules can be, and are, meaningfully stricter than what a typical Texas GCD imposes.

The single most consequential departure: every well within EAA jurisdiction must be registered with the authority, including exempt domestic wells -- wells producing under 25,000 gallons per day for household use, which in most of the rest of Texas fall outside a GCD's permitting reach almost entirely and require little more than compliance with basic well-construction standards. In EAA territory, that exemption still lets you avoid a withdrawal permit, but it does not let you avoid registering the well itself. Before drilling or buying land with an existing well inside the EAA boundary, confirm registration status directly with the authority -- an unregistered well, even a small domestic one, is a compliance gap worth catching before closing rather than after.

Active pumping curtailment: a real, but genuinely volatile constraint on larger rights

Beyond registration, EAA imposes staged pumping curtailments on larger permit holders -- those authorized to pump more than three acre-feet per year -- tied directly to aquifer levels measured at index wells. These stages move with drought and recovery, sometimes within the same year: reporting from mid-2025 documented the EAA under Stage 2 restrictions (a roughly 30 percent pumping reduction) amid historically low aquifer levels; reporting from July 2026 documented the authority easing to Stage 1 (a 20 percent reduction) following rains; and EAA's own August 2026 announcement confirmed the San Antonio Pool had reverted back to Stage 2 within weeks of that easing. For anyone evaluating land with an existing, larger Edwards Aquifer water right attached -- agricultural, industrial, or a larger domestic/commercial use exceeding the three-acre-foot threshold -- the right's paper authorization is not the same as what it can pump today, and the stage itself is not something to treat as settled even from month to month. Ask the EAA directly for the specific permit's current allowed withdrawal under whatever stage is active right now, not just its original authorized quantity.

Because these stages can shift within a single year based on rainfall and aquifer recovery, a buyer should treat the currently active stage as a snapshot rather than a fixed planning assumption -- confirm the EAA's current stage and the specific permit's resulting allowance as close to closing as possible, and ask what historical stage volatility has looked like for that permit if the land's value depends meaningfully on irrigation or heavy water use.

Bexar County sits entirely inside EAA jurisdiction

Bexar County is one of only three Texas counties -- along with Medina and Uvalde -- that fall entirely inside the Edwards Aquifer Authority's jurisdiction, per EAA's own jurisdictions page. Every well in Bexar County, anywhere in the county, is subject to EAA's rules; there is no rule-of-capture, non-EAA slice of Bexar County that a buyer needs to rule in or out. The counties where EAA coverage is genuinely partial -- where confirming a specific parcel's status actually matters -- are Comal, Hays, Caldwell, Guadalupe, and Atascosa Counties, not Bexar. If your land is in one of those five counties, confirm the parcel's EAA status directly with the authority's own maps and GIS tools; in Bexar County, EAA jurisdiction applies countywide.