Edwards Aquifer

Most Texas groundwater is owned in place and pumped under the rule of capture, with limits set locally by groundwater conservation districts. The Edwards is different. The Edwards Aquifer Authority, created in 1993 and fully operational in 1996, administers the aquifer under a statutory cap: permitted withdrawals may not exceed, and may not be less than, 572,000 acre feet per year.

That two-sided cap is the whole reason a market exists. Because no new withdrawal permits can be created beyond the ceiling, and because no new wells may be drilled to pull water outside the permitted system, the supply of tradable rights is fixed. When supply is fixed and demand from a growing San Antonio keeps rising, permits acquire durable value and change hands through leases and sales.

The single most important thing to know about an Edwards permit is which kind it is, because it decides what you can legally do with the water.

Base irrigation groundwater is tied to the land that was historically irrigated. It passes with that land, it can be leased only for irrigation, and an irrigation lease is capped at a ten-year term. Unrestricted irrigation groundwater is the flexible asset: it can be leased or sold for any use, including municipal and industrial, anywhere inside the EAA boundary. Converting base to unrestricted is possible but is a regulated step, not a formality.

On top of the type distinction, the statute limits how much an irrigation holder can lease at all: no more than 50 percent of the rights initially permitted. Leases are also calendar-year bounded and terminate on December 31 of their final year, and any lease longer than one year must be recorded in the county deed records.

The Edwards has real, sourced prices, but no index. The Edwards Aquifer Authority does not require price reporting, and only about 9 percent of recorded sale transactions disclose a price, so every figure below is a benchmark rather than a live quote.

The clearest public numbers come from two places. The San Antonio Water System has reported leasing Edwards rights at $100 to $140 per acre foot per year, with historical drought spikes toward $185. And the EAA runs standby programs that pay irrigators to forgo pumping: the Voluntary Irrigation Suspension Program Option (VISPO) pays $54 per acre foot per year to stand by, plus $160 per acre foot in years when irrigation is actually suspended, for $214 per acre foot total, and a separate aquifer-storage forbearance program pays a flat $100 per acre foot per year.

Geography is priced into Edwards rights because of a specific rule. Under the EAA Rules, moving a withdrawal point from the west side to the east side of Cibolo Creek is barred except in narrow, now largely expired circumstances, and where transfers are allowed they carry groundwater-trust ratios of five to one from Uvalde and three to one from the Medina, Atascosa, and Bexar area.

The practical effect is that water already east of Cibolo Creek, closer to San Antonio demand, is more useful to the biggest buyers and commands the highest reported prices, while west-side water is effectively fenced off from that demand. When you value an Edwards right, which side of the creek it sits on is not a detail, it is a primary driver.

The Edwards is managed through critical period management: as the J-17 index well for the San Antonio Pool and the J-27 well for the Uvalde Pool fall, and as Comal and San Marcos springflows drop, the EAA declares stages that cut permitted pumping by set percentages. As of August 2026 the San Antonio Pool is in Stage 2, a 30 percent reduction, while the Uvalde Pool is unrestricted.

For a lessee this is the supply risk that has to be priced. A permit rated at a given number of acre feet delivers less water in a curtailment stage, and the San Antonio Pool has spent most of the period since 2022 under some stage of restriction, including a first-ever Stage 5 (44 percent) in May 2025. A well-papered lease says explicitly who bears curtailment risk.

A quieter factor shapes Edwards decisions: the annual aquifer management fee. For 2026, agricultural permits are charged about $2 per acre foot on water actually pumped, while non-agricultural permits pay roughly $97 per acre foot on the full permitted amount, whether or not it is used.

That gap means converting an agricultural permit to municipal or industrial use is not just a paperwork change; it moves the holder onto a far higher fixed carrying cost. It is a real reason some owners lease their water for irrigation or into a standby program rather than convert, and it belongs in any honest valuation of what a conversion is worth.

Four checks decide an Edwards lease. Confirm your permit type, because base and unrestricted are different assets with different buyers and rules. Locate it against Cibolo Creek, because that sets which demand you can reach. Price the curtailment risk, because a stage cut reduces what the water actually delivers. And weigh the fee cliff before converting from agricultural to municipal use.

Because there is no price index and most deals are confidential, none of this is knowable from public listings alone. A confidential valuation brackets what your specific permit should earn, given its type, its location, and the stage the aquifer is in, before you talk to San Antonio or any broker.