Texas Water Code

Deals aim to stop high water bills in low-income community

The state has reached agreements with a community water supply corporation and its wholesale water and wastewater provider to help prevent a repeat of the unexpected, soaring water bills that rocked the low-income Kennedy Ridge Estates a year ago.

The Kennedy Ridge Water Supply Corp. may not be run by one person without oversight or review and must not use consumers' water and sewer payments for personal expenses, according to an agreement filed Tuesday in state District Court in Travis County.

SWWC Utilities Inc. , a subsidiary of SouthWest Water Co. , agreed last month to credit the Kennedy Ridge utility nearly $77,000 in restitution and to follow certain rules on increasing rates.

The agreements follow an investigation by the Texas attorney general, spurred by an American-Statesman report last year that detailed unexplained water rate increases in the eastern Travis County community and residents' struggles to pay their hefty bills. Now, bills that were once as high as $325 are less than half of that , according to a community leader.

Newly elected in April , Kennedy Ridge water board President Estella Rocha said she was pleased with the agreements. "We certainly are in better shape than we were before because we have these legal documents that are there for everyone's protection. We've come out successful."

At least a couple of Kennedy Ridge households went without water connections for months because residents were unable to pay or had bill disputes, but Rocha said every household in the community is online for water now . A new water board is in place, and a Dripping Springs-based company began managing the Kennedy Ridge utility in May.

A group of Texas senators announced last month that they will examine water and sewage rate increases by investor-owned utilities affecting thousands of people across Texas, including those in subdivisions in Travis, Hays and Williamson counties. The inquiry will include Monarch Utilities, owned by SouthWest Water.

A joint subcommittee of members of the state Senate committees on business and commerce and on natural resources has set its first public hearing in Austin on July 28.

State investigators allege that former Kennedy Ridge water board President Steve Ayala Cantu — with the help of his sister Vicenta Ayala Casanova and his wife, Humberta de Jesus Montes — collected thousands of dollars in water payments from residents, deposited the money in two bank accounts under fake company names and then spent nearly $115,000 from the accounts for his own benefit.

Texas Water Law - San Antonio Water & Water Rights Attorney Trey ...

It has been said "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fightin." In Texas, water is our most valuable resource, and has become increasingly scarce with our State's population explosion. Naturally, ownership, control and use of water carry tremendous legal and financial implications. Meanwhile, multiple layers of governmental regulation have made acquisition, development, use, marketing, and transmission of water in Texas increasingly complex. This site contains the musings of a water lawyer. FORT WORTH (TSCRA) – We have all read the various news accounts during the past several years of government trying to take away our property rights; if not the property itself. It is refreshing, for a change, to finally have government leaders, in the form of the Texas Legislature, affirming and reinforcing the rights we have in our property. This is exactly what CSSB 332, the Groundwater Property Rights Bill , does. No more, no less. The necessity of this bill comes because some groundwater conservation districts (GCDs), the very entities that the Texas Legislature entrusted to protect our water, are challenging who owns the groundwater. CSSB 332 doesn't change or cripple, in spite of what some have suggested, the current groundwater management system we have in Texas, as GCDs will still maintain their current authority to issue permits to drill wells, enforce the spacing of wells, and limit the amount of groundwater that can be produced from each well. However, GCDs won't be able to deny landowners the rights they have in their groundwater for no reason. CSSB 332 amends the Texas Water Code by stating that the Texas Legislature recognizes that a landowner owns the groundwater below the surface of the landowner's land as real property. If that sounds eerily like what the Texas Supreme Court has already stated and what most everyone believes is actually the law, that's because it is. However, that doesn't stop some people from trying to convince you that if this bill passes and becomes law the sky will fall. The same individuals who are trying to convince you of the dire consequences of this bill most often have an incentive for the law to remain unclear, from the Texas Water Code's perspective. Or, they have a significant difference of opinion from what most Texans believe in when we talk about property rights. Some have even suggested, ironically, that CSSB 332 would allow water marketers or billionaires to mine the aquifers until the water is gone.

Water Code

Texas Water Code, including water auxiliary laws : with tables and index : as amended through the 1983 regular and first called sessions of the 68th Legislature

Appropriative rights model water code

Texas water atlas

Springs of Texas