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A Dallas-area company seeking to install 43 high-capacity water wells in East Texas is suing the local groundwater conservation district for holding up the process.
The proposed project — backed by Conservation Equity Management and its CEO Kyle Bass — drew the ire of East Texans this year, including a state lawmaker who tried to stop the project during a special session. Bass has argued that the company’s goal is to explore how much water is in the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer before beginning to draw from its depths.
He wants the project to move forward.
“At this early stage in the process, the applicant, here Plaintiffs, is unsure whether water will even be produced,” Bass’ attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. “The purpose of the drilling permit is to allow the applicant to conduct the work needed to determine whether drilling would be fruitful at all.”
The groundwater district declined to comment.
The lawsuit was first reported by The Texas Lawbook and The Dallas Morning News.
The applications were deemed “administratively complete,” a legal term meaning they were filled out properly, by the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District in April 2025. Completing that step brought the project closer to final approval from the district.
Community members, business owners and lawmakers all raised alarm bells because the wells would be able to pump billions of gallons from the aquifer, potentially draining their own wells. Wayne-Sanderson Farms LLC, which has three complexes in East Texas, filed a lawsuit against the groundwater conservation district to stop the district from approving the application.
In mid-October, board members of the groundwater conservation district agreed to allow their attorneys to negotiate a settlement with the poultry farm. One of the terms of that settlement would void the district’s original decision that the permits were complete.
A district judge approved that settlement on Oct. 23 and ruled that the district cannot approve any applications that may result in withdrawals of 3,000 acre feet of water or more until the aquifer can be studied. It also voided the original decision that Bass’s permits were administratively complete.
This lodged Bass’s company in “administrative limbo,” the attorneys wrote.
The company is also intervening in the Wayne-Sanderson Farms lawsuit, asking for the judge’s order to be vacated because it took away or impaired “another person’s statutory and constitutional rights without the affected person even being named a party.”
The company requested a hearing by Nov. 14.
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