Buying Land in Hockley County, Texas

A groundwater district where this county's own numbers tell a different story

CORRECTED 2026-09: this page previously stated every well in Hockley County falls under the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District No. 1 (HPWD). That overstated the district's reach -- HPWD's own materials list Hockley among its partial-coverage counties (alongside Armstrong, Castro, Crosby, Deaf Smith, Floyd, Potter, and Randall), not one of its 8 full-coverage counties, meaning a well outside HPWD's actual Hockley County boundary has no groundwater conservation district at all. Where HPWD does apply, its 16-county service area has recorded a well-documented long-term Ogallala Aquifer decline -- the district's own reporting shows a ten-year (2010-2020) average change of roughly -7.85 feet across its territory. Hockley County's recent numbers depart from that pattern in a way worth taking seriously rather than treating as noise: HPWD's 2022-2023 measurement cycle found Hockley County wells showed almost no net change, and the district's 2019-2020 cycle recorded its single largest water-level rise anywhere in its territory -- 5.64 feet -- in a Hockley County well.

That's a genuinely different local picture than the steady decline reported for much of the wider South Plains, and it's specific to actual HPWD monitoring data rather than a marketing claim. It doesn't mean pumping limits or permit rules are any looser here -- HPWD's standard permit-threshold, spacing, and Allowable Production Rate framework applies across the full district the same way it does in neighboring counties -- but it does mean a well's expected long-term reliability in Hockley County shouldn't be assumed to track the more commonly reported regional decline story. Ask HPWD directly for the current water-level trend and any recent readings for the specific area of a parcel before valuing irrigated land on either assumption.

Septic permitting: confirm which desk handles it

This research could not confirm whether Hockley County holds TCEQ authorized-agent status to issue its own OSSF (septic) permits. Hockley County sits within TCEQ's Region 2, headquartered in Lubbock, which handles OSSF permitting directly for counties in its region that have not become authorized agents. Before budgeting for a system, confirm directly with Hockley County whether septic applications are processed locally or through the Lubbock regional office -- the underlying technical standards (30 TAC Chapter 285) are the same either way, but the office, forms, and timeline are not.

A dual economy: cotton and oil on the same land

Hockley County's economy runs on two industries sharing the same ground: roughly 200,000 irrigated acres, drawing on the Ogallala Aquifer through HPWD-permitted wells, support cotton, grain sorghum, wheat, and other row crops that consistently rank the county among the state's leading cotton producers, while oil and gas production continues alongside that farmland under the Texas Railroad Commission's jurisdiction. For a buyer, that combination means a specific parcel's history and current use -- actively farmed cropland, land with an existing or potential oil/gas lease, or both -- is worth confirming directly, since mineral ownership, surface-use agreements, and irrigation-well permits can each carry separate paperwork and separate parties to check with before closing.