Texas has a favorable regulatory environment allowing water-rights holders to flexibly share their water rights with other water users – such as industry, municipalities or the environment—while retaining control of those rights.
We work to demonstrate the numerous ways that private property owners can leverage their water rights to support healthy flows while creating financial value for themselves.
We work with partners across the state to help landowners find both conservation and financial value in their water rights. These include our Texas Water Markets Makers, qualified land trusts, conservancies and other conservation-minded groups whom TWT lends technical support to advance market-based water conservation. Among these efforts is a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy to advance voluntary agreements with landowners and water rights holders to enhance instream flows in Texas rivers and groundwater supplies.
If you are in a basin of interest in our first cohort of Texas Market Makers—Audubon Texas (Pecos Basin), Galveston Bay Foundation (Galveston Bay) and the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association (Blanco River), we can help connect you with these partners to explore water conservation and private property protection opportunities.
If you are a landowner with water rights in the Llano, Pedernales and San Saba Rivers, we can help you connect with our partners at the Hill Country Alliance, Hill Country Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy to explore conservation opportunities.
If you work with another land conservancy, we can help them evaluate opportunities to discover conservation value to your water rights. Lastly, if you are a landowner in West Texas, learn more about our market-based efforts to restore perennial spring flows to Comanche Springs in Fort Stockton.
If you are a landowner interested in any of the opportunities above, please contact Scott Moorhead at moorhead@texaswatertrade.org.
Below are our immediate priorities that we are looking for landowners to work with.