Texas water wars: east texas farmers battle billionaire’s plan to drain their aquifer

In the sweltering heat of a June evening in Jacksonville, Texas, nearly 100 angry farmers and ranchers packed into a city hall meeting, united against an unlikely enemy: hedge fund manager Kyle Bass and his plan to pump 15 billion gallons of water annually from their local aquifer. The billionaire’s two LLCs are seeking permits to extract vast quantities from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer underlying East Texas’s lush forests and farmland, sparking fears that local wells and agricultural operations will run dry.

The conflict represents a growing crisis across Texas, where prolonged droughts intensified by climate change have left western cities desperately seeking new water sources. San Antonio has already tapped the same aquifer with a 140-mile pipeline extracting 16 billion gallons yearly, causing rural wells to falter. Austin suburbs and other rapidly growing areas are following suit, creating what observers compare to a “gold rush” for groundwater rights. Bass argues his water exports could help solve the state’s shortage, calling his proposed extraction “a drop in the bucket” compared to statewide needs.

The controversy highlights Texas’s antiquated “rule of capture” law, which allows landowners to pump unlimited groundwater from beneath their property, even if it harms neighbors. This 19th-century doctrine, combined with weak regulatory oversight, has left rural communities vulnerable to large-scale commercial water operations. The dispute has prompted calls for stronger state regulation—an ironic twist in a deeply conservative region where residents typically oppose government intervention. As one local farmer testified with biblical fervor, “Today’s water barons join river to river, well to well, until all water flows through their meters.”