A federal judge has dismissed nine of 11 remaining legal claims, and related claims for attorneys’ fees, Aqua Texas, Inc. brought against its groundwater regulator. At the same time, the Court preserved for trial nearly all of the District’s counterclaims for violating the District’s rules. Those claims accuse Aqua Texas of overpumping groundwater, including during times of extreme drought.

In a ruling issued August 24, 2026, Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra considered separate motions for summary judgment filed by both parties in Aqua Texas, Inc. v. Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (No. 1:23-CV-01576-DAE, Western District of Texas). The ruling guts nearly all of Aqua Texas’s legal challenges to the District’s authority. 

Aqua Texas, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Essential Utilities, Inc., filed the lawsuit in December 2023 after the HTGCD offered to settle Aqua Texas’ 2022 overpumping violations for $448,710 in lieu of seeking civil penalties in district court. Aqua’s suit challenges the District’s authority to regulate groundwater in the Texas Hill Country and seeks injunctive relief and monetary damages. The Court had previously dismissed Aqua’s due process claims and claims brought against the District’s directors in their official capacity.

“This ruling gives the Wimberley Valley community an important victory in the battle against Aqua Texas and its decades-long mismanagement of our water systems,” said Louie Bond, executive chair of Say No To Aqua Texas. “We are grateful to the court for seeing Aqua’s egregious claims for what they are.”

BY THE NUMBERS

• 9 of 11: Aqua Texas’ remaining claims dismissed by the court
• 1: Aqua Texas claim left standing, a Texas Open Meetings Act/Texas Water Code rulemaking claim the court found not proven by summary judgment evidence
• Nearly all: District counterclaims preserved for trial, including the central claims for overpumping
• Aqua Texas subject to civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day of violation for years of violations of the District’s rules, including $448,710, which Aqua Texas refused to pay the District to settle its 2022 overpumping violations
• Nearly 238 million gallons: pumping by Aqua Texas in excess of its permits between 2022 and 2024, by the District’s accounting, and additional overpumping in 2025
• 222 days: the number of days Jacob’s Well went dry in 2022. The spring has not returned to consistent flow since.

WHAT THE COURT DID

The Court dismissed Aqua’s claims, finding that the District:

• did not exceed its statutory authority by instituting a permitting moratorium or assessing overpumping fines; 
• did not exceed its authority in enforcing waste and line-loss rules; 
• did not violate the federal Equal Protection Clause; 
• did not effect an unconstitutional taking through its permitting moratorium or its treatment of the utility’s test wells; and 
• did not fail to meet Texas Open Meetings Act notice requirements. 

The Court preserved for trial, after the opportunity to consider more evidence, the question of whether the District violated certain TOMA and Chapter 36 rulemaking requirements. 

The Court also dismissed Aqua’s related claims for attorneys’ fees and costs tied to its equal-protection theories but preserved claims for attorneys’ fees related to the TOMA claim.

The Court has also preserved the District’s counterclaims asserting that:


• Aqua pumped groundwater in excess of its permits;
• Aqua has failed to timely file required pumping reports with the District; 
• Aqua has failed to cap or plug wells or failed to notify the District of capping and plugging; and the District is entitled to its attorneys’ fees and costs incurred.

Of the claims under consideration, Aqua prevailed on two narrow points: the Court agreed that the HTGCD cannot apply its groundwater waste rule to sewage and wastewater spills and dismissed the portion of the District’s counterclaims based on pumping under expired permits. 

“Nearly all of Aqua Texas’s claims have been rejected, and the case that matters most, the overjumping of our groundwater during a historic drought, is headed to trial. Our neighbors have said all along that Aqua Texas should follow the same rules as everyone else. The court just cleared the way for that fight to move forward,” Bond said.

WHY IT MATTERS

The ruling is a setback for a years-long effort by an out-of-state utility to use federal court to limit the reach of a local Texas groundwater district. Groundwater conservation districts are the primary institutions Texas relies on to manage and protect its aquifers.

The outcome preserves the District’s ability to hold Aqua Texas accountable for excess pumping, along with other violations of the District’s rules. 

With Aqua’s constitutional and most other legal theories dismissed, HTGCD’s overpumping and other rules violations counterclaims now move toward trial, where the volume of water the utility drew from the Trinity Aquifer will be squarely at issue.

As we all know, the Blanco River and Cypress Creek are a big part of what makes the Wimberley Valley such a special place to live. They support wildlife, recreation, local businesses, and the overall character of our community. Protecting them takes all of us working together, which is where the Blanco-Cypress Interlocal Agreement, or ILA, comes in. 

We are lucky to have two ILAs in our area; there has been some confusion between the Blanco-Cypress ILA and the separate regional water and wastewater ILA. While both involve local governments working together, they are two different agreements with different purposes. The Blanco-Cypress ILA is specifically focused on supporting the Blanco-Cypress Watershed Protection Plan (BCWPP) and coordinating efforts to care for our local water resources. 

The partners in this collaboration are Hays County, the City of Wimberley, the City of Woodcreek, The Watershed Association, and Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. Together, these partners support my role as Watershed Coordinator and help move projects forward that protect water quality, reduce pollution, conserve water, and improve the long-term health of the watershed. 

The Watershed Protection Plan is essentially our community’s roadmap. It helps guide how we address concerns such as bacteria, sediment, stormwater runoff, erosion, septic systems, drought, and the impacts of continued growth. My job is to help connect the people and organizations already doing great work, identify opportunities to collaborate, and help turn the plan’s goals into projects that make a difference on the ground.

Education is also an important part of this work. This school year, we are building our partnership with Wimberley ISD by working with Wimberley High School practicum student Avianne Hershberger. Avianne is helping with watershed education and outreach while gaining hands-on experience in environmental science and community conservation. We are looking forward to the year ahead!

Avianne Hershberger, a senior at Wimberley High School, is passionate about pursuing a degree and career in environmental conservation. Through her school’s Practicum program, she became an intern for the Watershed Association to gain hands-on experience in all aspects of water conservation, an issue near and dear to her heart as a lifelong Wimberley resident. 

Avianne is a strong advocate for environmental stewardship in our community. She serves as a Keep Texas Beautiful Youth Ambassador, a non-profit network that encourages young adults to develop clean-up and beautification projects to better their communities. Specifically, Avianne initiated and planned student-led clean-ups, a garden planting within the Wimberley High Courtyard, and a stormwater-protection mural project that she presented to the Wimberley City Council. Upon City Council’s unanimous approval, she developed the official “Paint the Drains Campaign,” which strives to involve Wimberley’s art students in the promotion of clean water in our beloved waterways. 

We are also helping with the environmental systems course at Blanco River Academy. This gives us an opportunity to introduce students to watershed science using the places they already know, such as the Blanco River, Cypress Creek, and Jacob’s Well, and help them understand how water quality, groundwater, conservation, and everyday choices are all connected. 

I hope to continue sharing helpful and approachable information about our watershed, including water-quality monitoring, local projects, educational programs, and simple ways community members can get involved. Most importantly, I want to help people better understand the work happening behind the scenes and how we can all play a part in keeping our waterways clean, clear, and flowing.