Well Water in Caldwell County, Texas: Two Districts, One County

Two districts with two different origin stories

Caldwell County's groundwater is split between two separate conservation districts, each with a genuinely different history and legal basis. The Plum Creek Conservation District (PCCD), headquartered in Lockhart, was originally created in 1957 for flood control in the Plum Creek watershed spanning portions of Hays and Caldwell Counties, under the flood-control authority in Water Code Chapter 51. It wasn't until January 1, 1989 that the Texas Legislature amended PCCD's enabling legislation to add groundwater management responsibilities under Water Code Chapter 36 -- and that expansion had to be separately affirmed by a vote of district residents on May 1, 1993, before it took full effect. That means PCCD is, unusually, both a flood-control authority and a groundwater regulator under two different statutory chapters at once.

The Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District (GCUWCD), by contrast, was created more conventionally by a direct order of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (then the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission) on November 19, 1993, with jurisdiction over Gonzales County only at that point -- its reach into the southeast portion of Caldwell County came later and separately, not as part of that 1993 creation order (CORRECTED 2026-09, superseding an earlier framing that presented both as part of the same 1993 action). Caldwell County landowners petitioned to be annexed into GCUWCD in October 2007, the district's board approved that annexation in December 2007, and Caldwell County voters ratified it in a May 10, 2008 election -- some 14-15 years after GCUWCD's original creation. The two districts' territories meet somewhere inside Caldwell County's borders -- which one applies to a given well depends on exactly where the parcel sits relative to that internal line.

The 2008 dual-annexation dispute, and the 2011 fix

That internal boundary was not always clean. GCUWCD's own move into southeast Caldwell County was itself a 2007-2008 annexation (petitioned by landowners in October 2007, board-approved that December, and voter-ratified May 10, 2008) rather than a feature of its original 1993 creation -- and in that same 2008 window, both PCCD and GCUWCD separately annexed overlapping portions of Caldwell County, apparently at the request of different landowners in the same general area, creating a real conflict: parcels that, for a time, fell within both districts' claimed jurisdiction, or where it was genuinely unclear which district's permit requirements actually governed a given well. This wasn't a paperwork footnote -- it was significant enough that the Texas Legislature intervened directly, passing 2011 legislation that required the landowners affected by the overlapping annexations to choose a single district. The current district map used by both PCCD and GCUWCD today is the direct result of that 2011 legislative fix.

For a buyer today, the practical lesson isn't that this dispute is still active -- it was resolved over a decade ago -- but that Caldwell County's internal groundwater-district boundary is a real, historically contested line rather than an arbitrary administrative one, and it runs through the county rather than following an obvious landmark. A parcel anywhere near the southeast portion of the county, in particular, is exactly the kind of location where confirming which district actually has jurisdiction is worth a direct phone call rather than an assumption based on which office is closer or which district's name sounds more familiar.

What to verify before drilling a well in Caldwell County

1. Ask both PCCD and GCUWCD directly which district's jurisdiction covers a specific parcel -- don't assume based on the county seat (Lockhart, home to PCCD) or general geography alone, since the internal boundary was itself the subject of a real dispute.
2. For a parcel in or near the southeast portion of the county, confirm the current, post-2011 district boundary specifically, since that is the area the 2008 dual-annexation dispute affected.
3. Once you've confirmed the correct district, ask about that district's current well-permit application process, spacing rules, and any production limits -- PCCD and GCUWCD are separate districts with their own separate rules, not two branches of the same office.
4. If the parcel is anywhere in the Plum Creek watershed, also ask PCCD about its separate flood-control role under Water Code Chapter 51, since that's a distinct function from its groundwater authority and may involve different requirements.