Texas Legislation Would Require Water Well Owners to Report Usage Ogallala Aquifer Largest Drop in 25 years

Texas Legislation Would Require Water Well Owners to Report Usage


A Texas bill that would help the state manage how much water it's using was recently introduced.

State Senator Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo) filed a bill, SB 272, requiring most farmers to report their water usage to the Texas Water Development Board.
“It’s important to have an empirical measure of groundwater being removed from the modeled available groundwater,” Seliger said to StateImpact Texas, a reporting project of local public media and NPR. “So we know where we are at all times.”

According to the story, 56% of the water in Texas is used for farming and ranching, and much of that water comes from underground sources. The Ogallala Aquifer in the Texas Panhandle experienced its largest drop in 25 years in 2011.
The story reports that water in many parts of the state is managed by groundwater conservation districts, which number near a 100 and are mostly created by the legislature to help balance water needs and supplies. At the moment, neither the Texas Water Development Board nor groundwater districts require water withdrawal reporting, according to the bill’s analysis by the non-partisan Senate Research Center. Some groundwater districts already require reporting, but this law would make it mandatory. For the full article - Go to

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