Well Drilling in Texas, TX

• Bell County: Special District Local Laws Code 8877.004 puts the territory located in Bell County in the Clearwater Underground Water Conservation District unless modified.
• Erath County: Special District Local Laws Code 8862.004 makes the Middle Trinity Groundwater Conservation District coextensive with Erath, Comanche, Bosque and Coryell counties unless modified.
• Grayson County: Special District Local Laws Code 8859.003 set the Red River Groundwater Conservation District's initial boundaries to match Grayson and Fannin counties.
• Hays County: Special District Local Laws Code 8843.004 gives the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District the county minus any area that, on September 1, 2001, already lay in another district able to require a permit to drill or alter a well, absent later modification; section 8802.0035 places Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District territory in part of the rest. Check an address with the districts and the Edwards Aquifer Authority.
• Limestone County: TCEQ's statewide district map dated March 2026 shows no groundwater conservation district over the county. For a site near a county line, confirm with TCEQ or TWDB.
• McLennan County: Special District Local Laws Code 8821.004 set the Southern Trinity Groundwater Conservation District's initial boundaries to match McLennan County.
• Montgomery County: the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District, created by the 77th Legislature in 2001, describes itself as managing the groundwater in Montgomery County.
• Parker County: Special District Local Laws Code 8830.004 set the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District's initial boundaries to match Hood, Montague, Parker and Wise counties.
• Any other county: look for a district on TCEQ's district map, then read that district's own rules before booking a rig.

• Domestic and livestock wells that qualify for the Water Code 36.117(b)(1) permit exemption described below
• Pump installation, which Occupations Code 1902.001(8) defines to include repairing an existing pump
• Capping or plugging abandoned wells, and plugging deteriorated ones (16 TAC 76.72(e) and 76.104)
• Disinfecting a new, repaired or reconditioned drinking-water well or pump installation, which 16 TAC 76.100(h) requires unless the landowner waives it in writing

• The target aquifer: TWDB puts the Trinity Aquifer's combined freshwater saturated thickness at an average of about 600 feet in North Texas and about 1,900 feet in Central Texas. Ask which water-bearing zone a bid assumes and how deep it plans to drill.
• District charges: get the district's current fee schedule, with its effective date, before budgeting.
• Water quality: TWDB notes that iron tends to run very high in the limited water from the Woodbine Aquifer's upper zone, and that sulfate and chloride in the Trinity tend to increase with depth; ask whether treatment is likely.
• Cost calculator: the tool on this site takes your depth, applies a per-foot rate band that depends on the geology you select (Angi, HomeGuide and HomeAdvisor are the sources for those national rates), and adds a generic permit allowance plus, if left on, a pump and pressure tank. Because none of that is tied to Texas, no Texas total is printed here.

• Licenses: anyone who acts as a driller, or offers to, needs a license issued under Occupations Code chapter 1901 (section 1901.151), and section 1902.151 sets the same bar for pump installers. TDLR, which posts an online license search, says a license is required to drill a water-related well in Texas and to install a pump for one.
• Outside the license law: chapter 1901's definition of a water well driller excludes someone who drills, bores, cores or builds a water well on property of their own, for their own use, and an assistant who works under a driller's direct supervision and isn't primarily responsible for the drilling operation (1901.001(15)); chapter 1902 draws the same two lines for pump work (1902.001(5)). 16 TAC 76.30, Occupations Code 1901.161 and 1902.161 list further exemptions, each with its own limits, and 1901.052(b) and 1902.052(b) restrict TDLR rules on an owner's own pump work; check them with TDLR before relying on one. These exclusions concern the license: 16 TAC 76.72(a) has drillers, installers and persons having a well drilled, deepened or altered follow chapter 76 on well location and proper drilling, completion, capping, repairing and plugging.
• District permits: Water Code 36.113(a) has a district require a permit to drill, equip, operate or complete a well, or to substantially change a well's or pump's size, except as 36.117 provides. Section 36.117(b)(1) obliges each district to exempt from its permit requirement a well used solely for domestic purposes or for watering livestock or poultry, on condition that it sits, or will sit, on a tract exceeding 10 acres, and that its drilling, completion or equipment leaves it unable to yield over 25,000 gallons of groundwater in a day. Subsection (b) also covers certain rig-supply and mining wells, and (a) lets a district add exemptions.
• Exempt is not unregulated: under 36.117 the district still requires the owner to register the well and equip and maintain it to district casing, pipe and fitting rules (h), may apply spacing rules to any well except a (b)(3) mining well (f), and receives the driller's well log and any available geophysical log (i). Subsection (j) withholds the (b) exemptions from a well supplying water to a subdivision that needs a Local Government Code chapter 232 plat approval.
• Siting distances in 16 TAC 76.100(a): 150 feet or more between a well and any concentrated source of potential contamination (the listed examples include livestock or poultry yards, cemeteries, pesticide mixing/loading facilities and privies); 100 feet from a dry litter poultry facility or from the absorption field or spray area of a septic system, whether existing or proposed; and 50 feet both from any watertight sewage and liquid-waste collection facility and from the adjacent property line, the latter as long as the source distances are met. Monitoring, dewatering, piezometer and recovery wells may go where necessity dictates rather than meet the 150-foot and collection-facility distances. A driller may skip the property-line distance inside a district whose rules regulate well spacing, where public wastewater treatment is provided and used by the owner, or on property whose restrictions set spacing for both wells and on-site sewage systems.
• Alternative siting: 76.100(b) lets a well sit nearer to contamination sources (not in the Edwards Aquifer) or to the property line than subsection (a) allows when the well is sealed by one of the cementing or tremie methods it names, to the depth it sets and, for the tremie route, with the annulus size it requires; it adds separate placement terms for wells under 100 feet deep and for shallow aquifers. Read 76.100(b) itself or ask TDLR before siting a well on it.
• Construction under 76.100(c) and (e): waters of differing quality may not commingle in the casing, annulus or filter pack and degrade an aquifer or zone. For at least its top 10 feet the annulus must be 3 inches wider than the casing and filled, to 10 feet or more below the surface, with bentonite grout, cement slurry, or 8 feet of solid granular sodium bentonite with a 2-foot layer of cement above it as an atmospheric barrier (monitoring, dewatering, piezometer and recovery wells with shallower target water excepted). Under 76.100(f)(4), casing stands at least 12 inches above land surface, except monitoring wells where that is impractical or unreasonable.
• Well reports: Occupations Code 1901.251(a) has a driller who drills, deepens or otherwise alters a water well keep a legible, accurate log, recorded at the time, with the contents that subsection and TDLR rules list. Under 16 TAC 76.70, within 60 days after that work is completed or stops, the driller files TDLR's copy of the State of Texas Well Report electronically through the online Texas Well Report Submission and Retrieval System. The owner, or the person who had the well drilled, gets a copy, as does the groundwater conservation district if there is one, and each report gives the well's latitude and longitude. The statute's own list in 1901.251(b) also names TCEQ.
• Abandoned and deteriorated wells, as Occupations Code 1901.255(a) defines them: 16 TAC 76.72(e) says a deteriorated well must be plugged and an abandoned well either capped or plugged, and 1901.255(c) gives the landowner or other person possessing it 180 days from learning of its condition. Section 76.104(a) has a licensee or the well owner do the work to that section's specifications and in compliance with district rules or city ordinances; follow its fill materials and limits as written. Under 76.104(d), a well that is not deteriorated, still has sound casing and is of benefit to the landowner may be capped instead, with a cover that keeps out surface pollutants, bears at least 400 pounds and cannot be easily removed by hand.
• Plugging reports: whoever plugs the well has 30 days from finishing to send TDLR a State of Texas Plugging Report, electronically or by delivery or first-class mail, and to give copies to the groundwater conservation district, if any, and to the owner or person it was plugged for (16 TAC 76.70(3)).

• Aquifers: TWDB recognizes 9 major aquifers, which produce large amounts of water over large areas, and 22 minor ones. It says they supplied 55 percent of the 14.7 million acre-feet of water used in Texas in 2020, that about 75 percent of this water is used for irrigation, and that the Ogallala alone accounts for 74 percent of all groundwater used for irrigation, or 4.5 million acre-feet per year.
• Recharge zones: TWDB describes an aquifer's outcrop, where its host formations are exposed at the land surface, as its principal recharge zone, and says groundwater there is normally under unconfined, water-table conditions and "is most susceptible to contamination."

Bell County · Erath County · Grayson County · Hays County · Limestone County · McLennan County · Montgomery County · Parker County