Dallas millionaire Kyle Bass is facing mounting opposition over his plan to drill into the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in East Texas, a move that could eventually extract up to 15.9 billion gallons of groundwater annually, more than triple the yearly usage of Longview.
Bass, through his firm Conservation Equity Management, has purchased over 11,000 acres across Anderson, Houston, and Henderson counties. His current request is for permission to drill exploratory wells. He says the goal is to better understand the aquifer’s capacity using real-world data.
“If the data... indicate less water is available than our hydrogeological and engineering studies project, we will re-evaluate our plans,” Bass said in a statement.
But many East Texans aren’t convinced. The aquifer, which stretches from East Texas to the Mexico border, supplies thousands of private, municipal, and agricultural wells. Locals are already seeing water levels drop and worry Bass’s project could accelerate the decline.
Experts agree the consequences could be profound. Kelley Holcomb of the Angelina & Neches River Authority warned that the aquifer is more sponge than river, its water does not flow freely and recharges slowly.
“Nobody knows how much water is down there,” Holcomb said. “We won’t know until they do it, and once they do it, it’s too freaking late.”
State Rep. Trent Ashby, (R), was blunt in a recent legislative hearing: “This project sets a dangerous precedent. It’s not for our cities, our schools, our industries or our landowners.”
Bass has invoked Texas’s century-old “rule of capture,” which allows landowners to pump unlimited groundwater from beneath their property. But critics argue the law, designed for a less populated Texas, no longer reflects today’s realities.
“It's not going to take much pull on this aquifer to stop that pressure from giving us that local groundwater that we live on,” said Anderson County Commissioner Greg Chapin.
While Bass insists no decision on large-scale extraction has been made, the scale of his exploratory request, and the lack of firm regulation in parts of the region, has left residents fearing the worst.
