Buying Land in Burnet County, Texas

A new groundwater management zone, and a much bigger minimum lot for a well

Burnet County's groundwater is regulated by the Central Texas Groundwater Conservation District (CTGCD), created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 (S.B. 967). In response to what CTGCD identified as red flags -- declining water levels, water-quality degradation, a high density of existing wells, and multiple approved subdivisions all relying on groundwater in the same area -- the district ran a public rule-making process and adopted new rules on January 23, 2026 creating the Northeast Burnet County Trinity Aquifer Management Zone (NBCTAMZ), covering the Briggs-Oakalla area of northeast Burnet County.

The headline change: inside the new zone, the minimum tract size needed to support a permitted well jumped from 2 acres to 10 acres -- a five-fold increase that directly affects whether a small parcel in that specific area can support its own well at all, and by extension whether it can be subdivided the way it might have been before January 2026. This is genuinely new and specific, not a longstanding rule, and it applies only within the defined NBCTAMZ boundary rather than countywide. See the dedicated well-water page for what's confirmed about the zone's boundary and what a buyer in that area should check before assuming a small lot will qualify for its own well.

Septic permitting and general development runs through the county directly

Burnet County's Development Services department handles OSSF (septic) permitting, subdivision review, and floodplain development directly, under a locally adopted OSSF Order and a published rules compilation based on TCEQ's statewide 30 TAC Chapter 285 standards -- confirming the county functions as its own permitting authority rather than routing applications through a TCEQ regional office. Confirm current fees, site-evaluation requirements, and any local supplemental standards directly with Development Services before budgeting for a system or planning a subdivision.

Highland Lakes tourism and an unresolved short-term-rental question

Burnet County's stretch of the Highland Lakes chain -- Lake Buchanan, Inks Lake, and part of Lake LBJ -- supports a genuine vacation-rental and lake-recreation economy, and Commissioners Court has publicly discussed an ordinance to register short-term rentals in the unincorporated county and enforce hotel occupancy tax collection through the Sheriff's office and Tax Assessor-Collector, citing rentals that weren't remitting the county's occupancy tax. This research could not confirm whether that ordinance has since been formally adopted. If a short-term rental is part of the plan for land here, don't assume either outcome -- confirm directly with the county whether a current registration requirement or hotel occupancy tax obligation applies to unincorporated-county rentals, separate from any rules a specific lakeside city (such as Marble Falls or Kingsland) might impose within its own limits.