Water Law—The SCOTX Report

23-0282·Petition For Review

TCEQ's Tier 2 antidegradation rule asks whether a discharge lowers a water body's overall "water quality" by more than a de minimis extent, not whether any single water-quality parameter such as dissolved oxygen changes, so TCEQ's whole-water approach follows its rules as written.
TCEQ's final order granting the City of Dripping Springs a wastewater discharge permit did not need a separate statement of underlying facts, because its findings are not set out in statutory language and Save Our Springs did not preserve the complaint.

23-0676·Other

A deed or lease using typical language to convey oil-and-gas rights, though silent on produced water, conveys the hydrocarbon lessee the right to possession, custody, control, and disposition of the constituent water in the liquid waste that is inevitably produced with the hydrocarbons; a surface owner who wants to keep it must reserve it expressly.
The Court rejected the surface owner's lessee's argument that produced water is groundwater belonging to the surface estate and that the lessee's rights are merely usufructuary, distinguishing Robinson v. Robbins Petroleum and the groundwater cases as addressing water, not oil-and-gas waste.

23-0742·Petition For Review

A landowner that twice sought party status in groundwater-permit proceedings and was refused exhausted its administrative remedies and properly invoked the courts' jurisdiction, even though it sued before 90 days had passed from its reconsideration requests.
The Court reversed the court of appeals' judgments in both cases and remanded.

23-0808·Other

Homeowners whose houses flooded during Hurricane Harvey presented legally insufficient evidence that a neighboring pipe-fabrication plant's defective drainage design was a but-for cause of their flooding, because their expert admitted he had done no analysis of the specific homes or the area and did not exclude the storm itself.
But-for causation is required under negligence, negligence per se under Water Code § 11.086, and negligent nuisance alike, and in a complex flooding case after a catastrophic rain proof of the defendant's negligence is not proof of causation and expert testimony is required.

24-0543·Petition For Review

Once a trial court order contains unequivocal finality language, a later order can't undo that finality by implication⁠—it must expressly and specifically say it's vacating, modifying, or altering the earlier order's disposition.
There's no stand-alone right to an injunction abating a nuisance: an injunction, like damages, requires an underlying cause of action, so the same two-year statute of limitations that bars a claim for damages bars a request for injunctive relief based on the same claim.

24-0958·Petition For Review

Does the Water Code or the Administrative Procedure Act set the deadline for suing over a groundwater district's permitting decision?
Did the court of appeals even have jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal in the first place?