As Texas lawmakers look ahead to the 2027 legislative session, water security is once again rising to the top of the state’s agenda. What was once considered a long-term infrastructure concern has evolved into an urgent policy challenge, as lawmakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders warn that current water management practices may be unsustainable.
In 2025, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made improvements in water infrastructure one of his seven emergency items. The final product — the passage of a constitutional amendment providing $1 billion dollars per year for water infrastructure projects from 2027 to 2047, paid for by state sales tax revenue. The measure signaled bipartisan recognition that Texas must invest heavily in its water systems to keep pace with rapid population growth, industrial demand, and prolonged drought conditions.
But funding alone may not solve deeper structural issues.
Those concerns were on full display Tuesday during a nearly seven-hour hearing of the Texas House Natural Resources Committee on Groundwater Management and Conservation. The hearing served as an early launching point for what lawmakers say will be months of intense interim study before the Legislature reconvenes in January 2027.
“To everyone in the water world, now is when we begin preparing for next session,” Committee Chairman Cody Harris, R-Palestine, said. “We’re gonna have some really hard conversations over the next several months. Some of the things we talk about have been avoided for a long time. So, if you are not at the table, here to discuss these things throughout the interim, do not come in January when the session has started.”
The committee heard invited testimony from representatives of the Texas Water Development Board, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts. Lawmakers sought clarification on what tools state agencies currently have to manage groundwater resources and what additional authority or legislative adjustments might be needed.
While agency officials focused on regulatory frameworks and planning tools, the tone shifted dramatically during the latter half of the hearing, when non-governmental stakeholders addressed the panel.
Tyler-area well builder Mark Calicutt delivered one of the starkest warnings.
“We’re headed towards a disaster,” Calicutt told the committee. “We’ve got some hard decisions to make … Otherwise, there’s not going to be anything there for us in the future.”
Calicutt described rapid declines in well output and water pressure in East Texas, along with deteriorating water quality. According to his testimony, aquifers that once provided abundant, clean groundwater are now showing signs of stress.
“We’ve been having to get into filtration. [The Wilcox aquifer] is full of tannins,” Calicutt said. “And it puts off this sulfur smell and gives us the sulfur smell in our water. It puts color in the water and makes it tea colored. If I run a bathtub of water in my house, it looks like I’ve got a bathtub of sweet tea. Twenty years ago, we didn’t have that.”
His account underscored a growing concern: that some regions of Texas may be extracting groundwater at rates that outpace natural recharge, threatening both supply and quality.
The debate over sustainability centered in part on Texas’ “Desired Future Conditions,” or DFCs. Groundwater districts are required to establish DFCs that project how aquifers should perform decades into the future, including expected water levels. These projections help guide permitting and pumping decisions.
However, Texas State University professor Robert Mace testified that the majority of existing DFCs may not meet common definitions of sustainability. According to Mace, 95% of current DFCs are not sustainable.
State Rep. Jeff Berry, R-Pearland, pressed Mace on that point. “I would assume when setting the DFC, sustainability would be an assumption,” Berry said.
“It’s a choice. It’s a policy choice that the districts could make,” Mace replied.
That exchange highlighted a core tension in Texas water law. Groundwater in Texas is governed largely at the local level, with districts balancing property rights, economic development, and conservation. Sustainability, under current law, is not a mandatory outcome but rather one option among many policy priorities.
State Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, asked Mace to explain what unsustainable management might mean over the long term.
“(An) example (of one of) the largest water level declines in the state are under Dallas-Fort Worth — over 1,000 feet in the artesian part of the aquifer,” Mace said. “So people have moved away from water wells and gone to surface water supplies. So if you’re managing unsustainably, at some point in the future, you’re going to have to look for another water supply.”
That shift — from groundwater to alternative sources like reservoirs, pipelines, or desalination — often comes with significantly higher costs. For fast-growing urban areas, those transitions may be manageable. For rural communities dependent on wells, the economic burden could be far more severe.
As the hearing concluded, Chairman Harris signaled that the committee intends to confront these challenges head-on during the interim, when lawmakers study issues but do not pass new legislation.
“Get ready for a very active interim,” Harris said. “We have a lot of stuff to study, and we’re not gonna waste any time getting to it.”
With billions of dollars in new infrastructure funding set to begin flowing in 2027, lawmakers now face a pivotal question: will those investments simply expand supply, or will the state also revisit how it defines and enforces sustainability? The answer may determine whether Texas’ water future is secured — or further strained — in the decades ahead.
