78 of the 254 Texas counties have no groundwater conservation district
On the state's map of groundwater conservation districts (TCEQ, map dated December 17, 2025), no district covers 78 of the 254 Texas counties. In those counties there is no district that requires a permit or a registration for a household well. They are not empty of wells: the reports behind this atlas count 25,419 home wells there. The ones with the most are Midland (3,246), Ector (2,843), Washington (1,775), Lavaca (1,266) and Williamson (1,229).
Updated every day from Texas Water Development Board driller reports. Last update: November 11, 2026, using the state file of November 10, 2026.
The figures
- Counties with no district
- 78 of 254
- Home wells in those counties
- 25,419
- last 10 years, or since 2001 where few
- Date of the state map
- December 17, 2025
- We checked it on
- November 11, 2026
The counties with no district
Most wells first. The last column opens that county's rules, with the official source. Tap a heading to sort.
What this shows and what it doesn't
- No district does not mean no rules. State rules on how a well is built and who may drill it apply in every county, and a city, a county or a subdivision can add its own.
- Districts are created and their limits change. This is the state map on the date shown; confirm with the county before you drill.
- This is not legal advice.
Questions
Which Texas counties have no groundwater conservation district?
78 counties on TCEQ's map dated December 17, 2025: Andrews, Aransas, Archer, Borden, Bowie, Briscoe, Brown, Callahan, Cameron, Camp, Cass, Chambers, Clay, Coleman, Crane, Dallas, Delta, Dickens, Eastland, Ector, El Paso, Falls, Franklin, Gregg, Hamilton, Harrison, Hopkins, Houston, Hunt, Jack, Jefferson, Jones, Kaufman, Kent, Lamar, Lavaca, Liberty, Limestone, Llano, Loving, Marion, Maverick, Midland, Mills, Morris, Navarro, Oldham, Orange, Palo Pinto, Rains, Red River, Rockwall, Sabine, San Augustine, Scurry, Shackelford, Shelby, Smith, Stephens, Stonewall, Taylor, Throckmorton, Titus, Trinity, Upshur, Upton, Val Verde, Van Zandt, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wichita, Wilbarger, Williamson, Winkler, Wood, Young, Zapata.
Do I need a district permit to drill a home well in a Texas county with no groundwater district?
Where no district covers the county, there is no district that requires a permit or a registration for a household well. State well construction rules still apply, and a city, county or subdivision may have its own. Confirm locally before you drill.
Sources you can check
- Texas Water Development Board, Submitted Driller's Reports database. The state's own file, rebuilt every night. Direct download (we used the file of November 10, 2026, 145 MB). SHA-256:
10b60ed0d9895e735f0b2c7833b5aa39de7a56fd68454fe16b3c14684f61ea7b - TCEQ, Groundwater Conservation Districts map (map dated December 17, 2025; checked November 11, 2026)
- TerraFunded, land rules in the 254 Texas counties: the answer for each county with its source
- TWDB well report viewer: the official report of each well, one by one
- TerraFunded, Texas Well Atlas dataset, archived on Zenodo. One row per well, no names, locations generalized to about 1.5 km. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24126380.
Check it yourself
- Download this page's table as a CSV (texas-counties-without-groundwater-district.csv): every figure in the text is in it.
- Open any county in the table. Its page lists its figures, and each well on its map opens the official report on the state's site.
- For the raw data, download the state file from the TWDB link in the sources and keep the wells whose proposed use is Domestic and whose work is a new well or a replacement.
- If a figure does not match, write to us with the county and the number: we correct it in the next update and say so.
How we got it
For each of the 254 counties we read the state's map of groundwater conservation districts and recorded whether any district covers the county. A county only counts here when no district covers any part of it on that map.
We count new and replacement domestic (home) wells with a valid depth on their report. Monitoring wells, soil borings, injection, geothermal and oilfield wells are left out. A depth under 10 feet or over 5,000 feet is treated as an entry error.
The well count of each county uses the wells finished in the last 10 years when there are at least 30; otherwise all since 2001. No median is shown under 10 wells.
The full method · All open data
How to cite this
TerraFunded (2026). "78 of the 254 Texas counties have no groundwater conservation district." Texas Well Atlas. From the Texas Water Development Board, Submitted Driller's Reports database (state file of November 10, 2026). https://terrafunded.com/wells/findings/texas-counties-without-groundwater-district. License CC BY 4.0. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24126380.
Free to use with credit under CC BY 4.0. Journalists: write to us for any county's figures.
More findings
- The water in new Texas wells sits 10 feet lower than 20 years ago
- In 36 Texas counties, new wells are at least 10% deeper than 20 years ago
- Texas home wells run from 36 feet in Wichita County to 1,100 in McLennan
- A water well in Texas costs about $9,000 to $21,500 at the typical depth, and the county changes it most
- In McMullen County, home wells run from 130 to 2,806 feet
- Texas drilled a record 16,057 home wells in 2022
- Parker County drilled 7,242 home wells in 10 years, more than any other in Texas
- The typical Texas home well gives 25 gallons per minute, but only 12% of the figures come from a pump test
- In 7 Texas counties, new wells are shallower than 20 years ago
- In the Hill Country, the water in new wells stands lower in 8 of 10 counties
- Around Dallas-Fort Worth, home wells run from 55 feet in Dallas County to 1,020 in Collin