Buying Land in Navarro County, Texas

A rare instance of actual county zoning -- around Richland-Chambers Reservoir

The Texas state hub explains that most Texas counties have no general zoning authority outside a short, named list of exceptions in Local Government Code Chapter 231. Navarro County is a genuine, checkable example of a county actually using one of those exceptions: it has adopted its own Richland-Chambers Lakeshore Area Zoning Ordinance, originally put in place in July 1987 -- the same year the reservoir was impounded, under 1987 state legislation that applied only to lakes completed after 1985 -- and later amended in 2017 and 2022 (CORRECTED 2026-09, superseding an earlier framing that treated the 2017 amendment as the ordinance's origin), administered by a dedicated Navarro County Lake Planning and Zoning Commission. The ordinance zones a roughly 5,000-foot band running around the shoreline of Richland-Chambers Reservoir -- a large Trinity River Authority/Tarrant Regional Water District reservoir that straddles Navarro and neighboring counties.

That zoning authority is real, but narrow: it applies specifically to that lakeshore band, not to the county as a whole. Most lakefront and near-lakefront parcels around Richland-Chambers also sit inside one of more than sixty platted subdivisions, each of which layers its own deed restrictions on top of the county's zoning ordinance -- and, notably, none of those subdivisions has historically imposed a required build-by timeline on a purchased lot. Given the layering of a specific zoning ordinance plus subdivision-specific deed restrictions, this is exactly the kind of area where a buyer should get the actual zoning district, setback, and building requirements confirmed in writing before assuming a typical rural-Texas 'no zoning' framework applies. See the standalone zoning page on this county for more on how the ordinance is structured.

Groundwater: no district, but a documented aquifer

Away from the lake, Navarro County is not covered by any groundwater conservation district, so Texas's rule of capture applies without a local board setting well spacing, permitting requirements, or production caps. The county's groundwater comes primarily from the Nacatoch Sand, which outcrops across central and eastern parts of the county and dips to the southeast at roughly 40 to 100 feet per mile; most residential wells here are completed somewhere between 100 and 800 feet. Water quality from the Nacatoch tends to be soft but alkaline and sodium-bicarbonate in character, which is worth knowing if the plan is irrigation or livestock use rather than just household water -- a water test on the specific well is the way to confirm suitability rather than relying on general aquifer characteristics.

Septic, subdivisions, and a second reservoir in the county

Navarro County's Planning and Development office, under a dedicated Environmental Division, handles on-site sewage facility (OSSF) permitting directly rather than routing applications to a TCEQ regional office -- a genuine local convenience, though it still requires a soil/site evaluation and a formal application before installation. The same Planning and Development office also runs the county's general subdivision application and building permit process, and maintains a designated county Floodplain Administrator role, so a single county office is worth calling first for zoning-adjacent questions, permits, and floodplain status alike on a specific parcel.

Separately from Richland-Chambers, Navarro County also contains Navarro Mills Lake, a smaller US Army Corps of Engineers reservoir on Richland Creek about sixteen miles southwest of Corsicana. It's real, federally managed flood-control and recreational infrastructure in its own right, and land near it can carry Corps-managed shoreline or flood-easement restrictions separate from anything the county's own lakeshore zoning ordinance covers -- worth checking specifically if a parcel sits near that lake rather than Richland-Chambers.