Water Districts

Overview

Texas Water Districts and Authorities (WDs) are local governmental entities that provide limited water-related services to customers and residents. WDs can be created by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a county commissioner’s court, or the legislature. WDs issue both tax-supported and revenue debt. (See generally, Texas Water Code, Chapters 49, 51, 54, 65, and Subtitle G of the Special District Local Laws Code).

Texas has many types of WDs. The five most common types that provide services to residential customers are: municipal utility districts (MUD), water control and improvement districts (WCID), special utility districts (SUD), river authorities (RA), and Utility & Reclamation District (U&RD).

Tax-supported and revenue debt issued by WDs is used to pay capital costs to engineer, construct, acquire, and/or improve water plants, wastewater treatment facilities, and sewer system drainage. Certain WDs can also issue tax debt for road and park construction and create conduit entities to issue conduit revenue debt for pollution control facilities for private entities.

Authorizing Water Code Chapters

District Purpose Chapter
Municipal Utility Districts Provides waterworks systems, sanitary sewer systems and drainage systems Chapters 49 and 54
Water Control & Improvement Districts Supplies and stores water for domestic commercial and industrial use Chapters 49 and 51
Special Utility Districts Provides water, wastewater and fire-fighting services Chapters 49 and 65
River Authorities Operates major reservoirs and sells untreated water on a wholesale basis Chapter 30
Utility and Reclamation Districts Provides conservation and development of all the natural resources within the district
Debt
Outstanding
- Fiscal Year 2024 -
Tax Supported:
$27,488,476,085
Revenue Supported:
$22,735,834,601
Total Outstanding:
$50,224,310,686
Debt
Issued
- Fiscal Year 2024 -
Tax Supported:
$3,830,245,000
Revenue Supported:
$3,149,547,000
Total Issued:
$6,979,792,000

Issuers of Texas Debt

Showing entries (filtered from total entries)

The fiscal year for the State of Texas runs from September 1 until August 31.

Unless otherwise stated, the data for each chart is as of the fiscal year stated above.

TIP: Click on the legend elements to focus the chart's display.

The chart above shows the purposes for which debt was issued for both tax-supported debt and revenue debt outstanding.

Click here to see a brief description of each purpose type.