Groundwater Law Can Bring Some Unwelcome Surprises to Property Owners
Stephen Cooney of Gray Reed, in a post on the firm’s website, provides some analysis of the state of groundwater law in Texas and discusses some of the effects of a Texas Supreme Court case that should now be a concern to land purchasers in every transaction.
In Coyote Lake Ranch, LLC v. City of Lubbock, the court found that a severed groundwater right would be worthless if the groundwater owner could not enter upon the land in order to extract the groundwater
Under the law now, a petroleum development company can set up a pad, build roads, lay pipeline and start drilling for water, even though the holder of the mineral rights waived the right to come on the property to drill for oil and gas.
