Hill Country retirement and water: aquifer stages, groundwater districts, utilities and what to ask a seller

Summary

Water is the one Hill Country cost that does not appear on a listing sheet. Two houses a few miles apart can draw from different aquifers, belong to different utilities, sit under different groundwater conservation districts and face different watering rules in the same week. This guide sets out who manages which layer, what the published stage systems say as of October 8, 2026, and what a retiree should ask before signing a contract in Kendall, Gillespie, Kerr, Comal, Hays, Blanco, Bandera or Burnet County.

Three layers matter. The first is the aquifer or reservoir that physically supplies water, and the regulator that manages it: the Edwards Aquifer Authority for the Edwards, a patchwork of groundwater conservation districts for the Trinity and other aquifers, and river authorities such as the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority and the Lower Colorado River Authority for reservoirs. The second is the water provider that sends a bill, which may be a city, a utility, a water supply corporation, a special utility district or a municipal utility district. The third is the property itself: a private well, a utility connection or both. Restrictions that a buyer experiences, such as a once-a-week sprinkler day or a surcharge on large lawns, come from the second layer, even when the trigger is a number from the first.

Conditions change by the week, so every stage, reading and rule below carries its date. Use the figures to understand how the systems work and what to ask, then confirm the current stage with the provider for the specific address. For hazards that sit next to water, such as wildfire and flood, see the guide to Texas hail, wildfire, drought, heat and power outages.

Key takeaways

• The Edwards Aquifer Authority's Critical Period Management plan has five stages. On October 8, 2026 the San Antonio Pool was in Stage 3 with a 35 percent reduction in permitted pumping, and the Stage 1 trigger is a J-17 level below 660 feet or Comal Springs below 225 cubic feet per second or San Marcos Springs below 96 cubic feet per second.
• The Authority regulates permit holders, not households, and it does not set city stages: SAWS was in Stage 3, New Braunfels Utilities listed Stage 2 effective August 10, 2026, and each declares its own rules, so confirm the stage and surcharge with the provider for the address.
• Outside the Edwards, groundwater conservation districts such as Hill Country, Headwaters, Cow Creek, Comal Trinity and Blanco-Pedernales set their own well rules and drought stages. Under Water Code Section 36.117 a domestic or livestock well on more than 10 acres that cannot produce more than 25,000 gallons a day is exempt from permitting but must be registered.
• City stage pages carry dates: Boerne's lists Stage 2 effective August 7, 2023 and Fredericksburg's lists Stage 4 since April 1, 2023, so confirm whether a stage is still in effect before relying on a page.
• Reservoir fullness and city restrictions can diverge. Lakes Buchanan and Travis held 96 percent on October 8, 2026 while Medina Lake stood at 28.6 percent on October 1, so ask each utility which sources it uses.
• Ask the seller about the Property Code Section 5.008 groundwater district line, any well and its registration, and any Water Code Section 49.452 district notice, and test a private well before closing.

The Edwards Aquifer Authority and its critical period stages

The Edwards Aquifer Authority, or EAA, was created by the Legislature in 1993 and began operating on June 28, 1996, according to its own history page. It regulates withdrawals from the Edwards Aquifer through a capped permitting system, and it is a member of Groundwater Management Areas 7, 9, 10 and 13. Its jurisdiction covers all of Bexar, Medina and Uvalde counties and portions of Atascosa, Caldwell, Comal, Guadalupe and Hays counties. NBU, the City of San Marcos, SAWS, the City of Schertz and Crystal Clear Special Utility District are among the providers the EAA lists by county. New Braunfels Utilities states that no new Edwards permits are being issued, which is why growing cities have had to add other supplies.

When aquifer levels or spring flows fall, the EAA applies its Critical Period Management plan. The plan has five stages. For the San Antonio Pool, which covers Atascosa, Bexar, Caldwell, Comal, Guadalupe, Hays and Medina counties, Stage 1 is declared when the 10-day average level at the J-17 index well in Bexar County drops below 660 feet above mean sea level, or when the 10-day average flow at Comal Springs falls below 225 cubic feet per second, or when the 10-day average flow at San Marcos Springs falls below 96 cubic feet per second. Stage 1 requires permit holders to cut withdrawals by 20 percent of their authorized annual amounts, prorated for the number of days the stage is in effect. A more restrictive stage is activated when any one of the three indicators reaches its trigger, but returning to a less restrictive stage requires all three 10-day averages to be above the thresholds of the current stage.

On October 8, 2026 the EAA reported that the San Antonio Pool was in Stage 3, with a 35 percent reduction, and the Uvalde Pool was in no stage. The 10-day averages were 641.3 feet at the J-17 well, 150 cubic feet per second at Comal Springs and 89 cubic feet per second at San Marcos Springs, the last of which is below the 96 cubic feet per second Stage 1 trigger for that spring. The EAA also reported a 10-year annual recharge average of 553,230 acre-feet for 2013 through 2022. SAWS publishes the same index well and shows how far levels can swing inside one year: in its 2026 statistics the Edwards level ranged from a minimum of 624.7 feet to a maximum of 652.1 feet, and Comal flow ranged from 54 to 233 cubic feet per second.

The point for a buyer is who the stages bind. The EAA says its stage reductions apply to Edwards well owners and permit holders authorized to pump more than three acre-feet a year, including water utilities that deliver Edwards water to customers, and that it does not enforce lawn watering rules or other general limits, which are enforced by the municipality. A household is therefore affected indirectly, through whatever its utility decides to do. A homeowner on a small exempt well in the same county is in a different position, and the sections below explain how.

How utilities turn aquifer numbers into household rules

Each utility adopts its own drought plan, and the triggers are written into city ordinances or utility policy. San Antonio Water System states that Stage 3 begins when the 10-day rolling average of the Edwards Aquifer level at the monitored well drops to 640 feet above mean sea level, and that coming out of a stage can be considered 15 days after the aquifer is above the trigger. SAWS announced on September 21, 2026 that customers had returned to Stage 3 after a brief reprieve. Under Stage 3, irrigation systems, sprinklers and soaker hoses may be used once a week from 5 to 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight on the address-based day, drip irrigation is allowed Mondays and Fridays in those hours, and hand-held hoses are allowed any time. For single-family accounts a Stage 3 surcharge of $10.37 per thousand gallons applies to use above 20,000 gallons a month; SAWS says the surcharge affects less than 2 percent of residential customers. As an illustration and our arithmetic, a household that used 25,000 gallons in a month would pay the surcharge on 5,000 gallons, or about $51.85, if the surcharge applies only to gallons above the threshold.

SAWS also says the Edwards Aquifer now represents only about half of the city's available drinking water because it is one of nine sources, and credits its aquifer storage and recovery facility and its desalination plant for helping San Antonio avoid the more severe drought rules some other communities have faced. That is the useful lesson: the more varied a utility's portfolio, the less a single aquifer number drives the stage. See the San Antonio record for the metro context.

New Braunfels Utilities, or NBU, shows how a utility on the same aquifer can sit at a different stage. NBU's current conservation page lists Stage 2 effective August 10, 2026: sprinkler irrigation is limited to once a week by the last digit of the service address and only before 10 a.m. or after 8 p.m., and decorative outdoor fountains are prohibited unless they use reclaimed water. The city ordinance ties the stages to the Edwards Aquifer Authority's 10-day average at the J-17 well or to Comal Springs discharge: Stage 1 at or below 660 feet or 225 cubic feet per second, Stage 2 at or below 650 feet or 200 cubic feet per second, and Stage 3 at or below 640 feet or 150 cubic feet per second, with the mayor, in consultation with NBU, declaring the stage. Because the declaration is a decision rather than an automatic switch, two providers can report different stages against the same readings, and a stage can lag or lead a trigger.

NBU's City Council approved an updated Drought Contingency Plan on September 28, 2026, effective October 1, 2026. It adds Stages 4 and 5 and raises the surcharge for high-volume users in severe drought from $1 and $2 per thousand gallons to $4.18 and $4.89. NBU states that customers using less than 6,000 gallons of household water a month will not pay drought surcharges, that about 73 percent of customers would not be affected, and that there is no surcharge in Stages 0 through 2. NBU also says the plan is not a rate increase and is not due to a shortage. Retirees who plan a large irrigated lawn should read those tiers against their expected use; a low-water landscape avoids most of the exposure. The New Braunfels record covers the city's other costs, and the San Marcos record covers the spring-fed river that depends on the same aquifer.

NBU's supply page is a model of what a buyer should be able to find from any utility. It lists seven sources totaling 54,575 acre-feet a year of authorized water: the Edwards Aquifer, Canyon Reservoir and Guadalupe River surface water, Trinity Aquifer wells managed by the Comal Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, a 2018 agreement with the City of Seguin through 2038, a short-term purchase from Green Valley Special Utility District through 2026, and the Gonzales-Carrizo Water Supply Project, which brings Carrizo Aquifer groundwater roughly 60 miles. NBU says Canyon Reservoir permits are fully allocated and that a surface water treatment plant expansion is expected online in 2029.

Groundwater conservation districts and who regulates a well

Outside the Edwards Aquifer Authority's territory, groundwater is managed by local groundwater conservation districts created under Chapter 36 of the Water Code. The Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District describes them as the state's preferred method of groundwater management. In the Hill Country, the Texas Water Commission declared a Priority Groundwater Management Area in 1990, which the Hill Country Underground Water Conservation District and Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District both describe as notice that water availability and quality would be at risk within 50 years. The list the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality published on June 12, 2026 includes districts for Bandera, Blanco-Pedernales, Comal Trinity, Cow Creek, Hays Trinity, Headwaters, Hill Country and Medina, among others; a buyer should confirm with the district whether a specific address is inside its boundaries.

The district map matters because each district sets its own rules. The Hill Country Underground Water Conservation District covers Gillespie County, was created by the Legislature in 1987 and confirmed by voters that August, and adopted its current groundwater management plan on January 9, 2024. Its plan requires every new exempt well in the district to be registered, and it commits the district to review groundwater availability studies under the county's subdivision requirements. The plan, using Texas Water Development Board planning data, says Gillespie County's total water supply needs are projected to be zero from 2020 to 2070, with strategies including municipal conservation, direct reuse and drought management for Fredericksburg. Projections like these assume the planning scenario and are not a guarantee for any one well. The same district's website lists a bacteria test for $15, a registration form for exempt wells and a Local Drought Index; its posted Local Drought Index for August 29, 2026 was -2.77, described as mild drought with outdoor watering limited to once a week, while a separate notice records a Stage 4 critical drought declared at the board's August 8, 2023 meeting. When a site carries a notice from a prior year beside a newer reading, ask the district which is current.

The Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District, at 125 Lehmann Drive in Kerrville, was created in January 1991 for Kerr County, registers and permits wells in the county, and posted that Kerr County was in Stage 3 drought conditions with a goal of a 30 percent reduction in water use. Its Stage 3 practices include limiting landscape irrigation, including lawns and golf courses, to two days a week between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m., and prohibiting pumping groundwater into ponds or lakes to enhance the appearance of the landscape. The Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District manages the Trinity Aquifer in Kendall County, which includes Boerne. Its website says the board moved from Drought Stage 3 to Drought Stage 2 at a July 13 meeting, and its Aquifer Watch banner reported the average water level 10.95 feet below the September average. Kendall Appraisal District's 2026 table lists Cow Creek as a taxing entity with an adopted rate of 0.005, so the district can appear on a Kendall County tax statement.

The Comal Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, which manages Trinity wells in Comal County, says its rules took effect January 1, 2019, that non-exempt wells must be metered, and that domestic and livestock wells not capable of producing 25,000 gallons a day are not required to have meters. It runs the Texas Well Owner Network and points owners to the state water well report for a given well. The Blanco-Pedernales Groundwater Conservation District, based in Johnson City, displayed a Drought Stage 2 banner on its home page and links to its rules, fee schedule and public well database. Districts in different counties therefore declare stages on different dates and for different reasons, and a city's stage and its groundwater district's stage are separate decisions.

Private wells versus utility service

State law gives most households with a small well a lighter regulatory path than a utility or a commercial user. Section 36.117 of the Water Code says a groundwater district shall exempt from permitting a well used solely for domestic use or for livestock or poultry if it is on a tract larger than 10 acres and is drilled, completed or equipped so that it is incapable of producing more than 25,000 gallons of groundwater a day. A district may not restrict production from such a well, but it must require the owner to register the well and to equip it to prevent the escape or pollution of groundwater. The exemption does not apply to a well that supplies a platted subdivision, and a district may cancel the exemption if the water stops being used solely for domestic purposes. A buyer on a smaller lot should not assume the same exemption; ask the district what applies to the specific parcel.

The practical differences between the two supplies are these. A utility customer receives treated water, publishes a drought plan with stages and surcharges, and shares the system's cost; the exposure is a restriction on watering and sometimes a high-use surcharge. A private well owner owns the pump, casing, storage tank and treatment equipment, is responsible for water quality, and depends on the water table beneath the property. Kerrville describes the second group when it explains why it is building the Elm Creek Pipeline: the project would reduce reliance on the Guadalupe River and the Lower Trinity Aquifer during extreme drought, when those sources are most critical to farmers, ranchers and people who rely on private wells. When the Hill Country Underground Water Conservation District declared a Stage 4 drought it recommended that residential wells limit outdoor watering to one day a week. Wells are also tested at the owner's initiative: districts such as Hill Country Underground Water Conservation District offer water testing, and the Comal Trinity district points owners to the Texas Well Owner Network.

The Texas Water Development Board's groundwater page lists research tools a buyer can use before making an offer, including the Submitted Driller's Report Database, Water Data Interactive and the groundwater availability models. Treat a driller's report as a record of the well when it was drilled, not as a guarantee of yield during the next drought. Ask for the well's age, depth, pump replacement history, the date and results of its last water test, and whether it is registered with the district. If the property has both a well and a utility tap, ask which one serves the house, which serves the irrigation, and whether the seller's lawn depends on the well.

A property inside a municipal utility district or similar district brings a different set of questions. Section 49.452 of the Water Code requires a person who proposes to sell real property in a covered district to give the buyer a written notice before the binding contract is signed. That notice is described in the guide to Texas MUDs, PIDs and special districts, and new homes are discussed in the guide on new construction versus resale.

City stage notices and how to read their dates

City pages are the most readable stage notices, but their dates deserve attention. The City of Boerne's water restrictions page states that Boerne is in Stage 2, effective August 7, 2023, describes four stages, limits sprinkler use to one day a week under Stage 2, bars landscape watering from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. year-round, and allows citations with fines up to $1,000 per violation. The City of Fredericksburg's water conservation page states that the city has operated under Stage 4 measures since April 1, 2023, adopted a Drought Contingency Plan in August 2000 with five stages, and adopted Resolution 2023-16R in October 2023 to explore One Water strategies, noting that groundwater supplies are nearing full allocation while demand is projected to rise. Its Stage 4 page limits outdoor irrigation to 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on designated days, prohibits filling private pools, and bars watering golf course tees and fairways with city potable water. The city's water department describes nine groundwater wells with a total production capacity of 8.2 million gallons a day.

Because both pages carry 2023 dates, a buyer should treat them as the last published declaration and confirm with the city whether the stage is still in effect. The same advice applies to any page that shows only a heading. The Boerne and Fredericksburg records describe the local setting, and the Kerrville record covers the city that is planning the Elm Creek Pipeline and already uses reclaimed water for irrigation and aquifer storage and recovery wells to bank river water when it is abundant.

Smaller cities publish stage changes as news items. Fair Oaks Ranch announced a move to Stage 1 of its Drought Contingency Plan effective August 1, 2026. Marble Falls announced that it had cancelled Stage 3 and returned to Stage 2 after completing water infrastructure improvements; Stage 2 applies to customers both inside and outside the city limits and limits irrigation to once weekly between midnight and 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. and midnight. That announcement is a reminder that city restrictions can follow the capacity of the city's own treatment and distribution system, not only the lakes. The Marble Falls record places that in the Highland Lakes setting, where the Horseshoe Bay and Llano records also describe watering rules and drought planning.

Reservoirs, river authorities and the state picture

Surface water has a different rhythm from an aquifer. The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority manages Canyon Reservoir, which was completed in 1964 for flood control and a dependable stored supply across the Guadalupe River Basin. At the conservation pool elevation of 909 feet it impounds 378,852 acre-feet, and the pool above it, up to 943 feet, is kept empty for floodwater. GBRA says the reservoir was not meant to hold a constant level, because upstream floods, evaporation, downstream senior water rights, releases for customers and environmental flows all move it. Its lowest recorded level was 877.49 feet on May 13, 2025. In August 2026, GBRA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cut the release rate from 250 to 150 cubic feet per second to keep drawing down the flood pool while inflows stayed elevated, and GBRA's conditions page showed a forecast release of 100 cubic feet per second on October 8, 2026. Canyon Reservoir is also one of the sources NBU describes in its supply portfolio.

The Lower Colorado River Authority operates the Highland Lakes under its 2020 Water Management Plan. On July 1, 2026, combined storage in lakes Buchanan and Travis was 1,834,024 acre-feet, and the plan classed the water supply condition as Normal. On October 8, 2026, the LCRA lake-levels page showed the two lakes holding about 1,908,161 acre-feet, or 96 percent. Those numbers can sit beside city restrictions without contradiction, because a city's rules reflect its own intake, treatment capacity and drought plan; the 2020 plan protects the supply of firm customers, mainly cities and industrial users, and adjusts interruptible agricultural water as conditions change.

The National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio drought statement valid October 1, 2026 shows how uneven recovery is. It reports that beneficial rain in June and July improved short-term drought, that September was very dry and hot, that Canyon Lake stood at 97.6 percent, Lake Travis at 89.3 percent and Lake Buchanan at 95.9 percent, and that storage at Medina Lake, at 28.6 percent, and Amistad, at 40.3 percent, remained low. It also gave the J-17 10-day average as 638.7 feet against a historical monthly average of 662.0. Statewide, the Texas Water Development Board reported that monitored water supply reservoirs were 72.6 percent full on October 8, 2026, and its drought dashboard for a map dated October 6, 2026 shows 82.00 percent of Texas in at least moderate drought.

At the planning level, the Texas Water Development Board says the state water plan addresses the needs of municipal, irrigation, manufacturing, livestock, mining and power users during a repeat of the drought of record from the 1950s, and that the 2027 State Water Plan is the twelfth. For a retiree the plan is background: it shows that cities are expected to hold enough water on paper, and the stage notices show how they ration it in practice.

What to ask a seller and the utility

Start with the document the law already requires. Texas Property Code Section 5.008 prescribes a seller's disclosure of property condition that asks the seller whether any portion of the property is located in a groundwater conservation district or a subsidence district, and whether the property has a rainwater harvesting system larger than 500 gallons that uses a public water supply as an auxiliary source. Read those answers, then ask the follow-up questions the form does not.

Ask which provider supplies the address and what stage it is in today, what the surcharge or penalty schedule is, and whether the provider is itself in the Edwards Aquifer Authority's jurisdiction. Ask whether the lot has a well, whether it is registered with the groundwater conservation district, whether the house is also connected to a utility, and what the last 12 months of water bills and water tests show. Ask the groundwater district whether the tract is large enough for a permit exemption, and ask how the district declared its most recent stage. Ask whether the property is in a municipal utility district and request the Section 49.452 notice before signing.

Match the lawn and the lifestyle to the stage. A once-a-week watering day is manageable for a native-plant landscape and harder for a large turf lawn or a pool that must be topped up; Fredericksburg's Stage 4 rules prohibit filling private pools and Headwaters' Stage 3 rules limit filling pools, with water allowed to replace loss from use or evaporation. If you plan a garden, a guest cottage or a pool, ask how the provider treats them in each stage and whether a variance process exists; SAWS and NBU both publish variance forms for specific uses. For a rural property, ask neighbors and the groundwater district how local wells have performed in prior droughts.

Finally, compare the same house under two rules: the price you would pay in a normal month and the price in the most severe stage the provider has published. For SAWS that means the Stage 3 surcharge; for NBU it means the Stage 3 through 5 surcharge tiers; for a private well it means the cost of a deeper well or a storage tank if the water table drops. A home with a diversified utility supply and a modest lawn is the lowest-friction choice, while a larger rural lot with a registered well can be a good fit if the buyer budgets for water testing, pump maintenance and a backup plan.

Places where this matters most

• BoerneA Kendall County city in the Hill Country with a historic Main Street district, a younger and higher-income profile than the region's retirement towns, a freestanding emergency room and no inpatient hospital described on the hospital system's pages, and a 2026 flood that put creek risk and water supply at the center of the buying decision.
• FredericksburgA Gillespie County city in the Texas Hill Country with a historic downtown square, a population in which about a third of residents are 65 or older, a hospital in town, a tax picture built from a short list of local units, and a groundwater-based water supply that has been under mandatory conservation.
• KerrvilleThe Kerr County seat on the upper Guadalupe River and the western medical hub of the Hill Country, with a regional hospital, a VA medical center, a large older-resident population, and a July 2026 flood whose recovery the city is still documenting.
• New BraunfelsA spring-fed river city on the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers between Austin and San Antonio, split between Comal and Guadalupe Counties, with two appraisal districts, two main school districts on the tax rolls and an unusually well-documented water and flood picture.
• San MarcosA Hays County river and university city on the Austin to San Antonio corridor whose retirement case rests on one large 55+ community, a hospital in town, and a flood and aquifer picture that deserves a close look before buying.
• San AntonioA very large Bexar County city and metro hub with a concentrated medical center cluster, a university-hospital district, an international airport, a long-standing military retiree community and a property-tax picture that varies sharply by school district, special district and suburb.
• Marble FallsA Burnet County city on Lake Marble Falls with a full-service hospital inside the city, a younger and more renter-heavy population than the lake resort towns, and city water restrictions that have recently moved between stages.

Related guides

• Texas hail, wildfire, drought, heat and power outages: the inland hazards
• Texas MUDs, PIDs and special districts: how to read the bill and the closing disclosure
• New construction versus resale homes in Texas
• Is Texas a good place to retire? An honest look at the benefits, the costs and the risks