A seller in Boerne recently sat down to sign a stack of closing paperwork and found a page that hadn't existed a year earlier. It asked whether the property sat inside a groundwater conservation district, how many wells were on the land, whether any of them had been capped or plugged, and whether the groundwater rights had ever been sold or leased away from the surface estate. The seller had lived on the property for over a decade and could answer maybe half of it with confidence.
That form is real, it is now mandatory statewide, and it lands with unusual weight in Kendall County.
A New Form With an Old Blind Spot
The Texas Real Estate Commission adopted a new standalone disclosure, Form 61-0, on May 4, 2026, with an effective date of July 1, 2026. It came out of a Sunset Advisory Commission review that directed TREC to put real information about groundwater and surface water rights in front of buyers before they sign a contract. The form now attaches through a new paragraph in the standard contracts, Paragraph 7(I) in the residential contract and 7(K) in the Farm and Ranch Contract, and it triggers automatically once a property meets the criteria.
Statewide, this is a paperwork update. In Boerne, it is closer to an audit of documentation that many sellers never assembled in the first place.
Why Boerne Carries More of This Weight
Most of San Antonio's established neighborhoods, Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills, Castle Hills, sit on municipal water and sewer. A seller there can answer the water questions on the new form in about ten seconds: city water, city sewer, done. Boerne and the unincorporated stretches of Kendall County around it are a different story. A large share of homes outside the city limits run on private wells and on-site septic systems rather than a hookup to Boerne's municipal utility. That single fact is what turns a one-page form into a research project for a meaningful slice of local sellers.
The Texas Land Title Association thought this was significant enough to build an entire continuing education session for escrow officers around it, titled around what closers need to know about the new Water Notice. Their framing was direct: this is a new document to track, new questions from both sides of the table, and a new way a file can stall if the paperwork isn't handled correctly. Escrow officers don't build training sessions around forms nobody has to think about.
What the Form Actually Asks
The disclosure isn't long, but it is specific. Sellers are asked to state what they know about:
- Whether the property sits inside a groundwater conservation district, and which one
- How many water wells exist on the property, how many are active, and how many have been capped, plugged, or abandoned
- Whether the property draws water from a well located on someone else's land, or whether groundwater rights have been leased in from outside the boundary
- Whether any groundwater rights have been sold, leased, or severed from the surface estate entirely
- Surface water rights tied to the property, including any permit, filing, or certificate of adjudication number
- Whether a pond, lake, or tank exists on the land, with or without water in it currently
None of these are trick questions. Most are things a seller who has owned the property for years should be able to answer without much digging. The trouble in Boerne is that the person answering isn't always the person who drilled the well.
The District Most Buyers Have Never Heard Of
The first line item, groundwater district status, has a specific answer for nearly every rural and semi-rural property around Boerne: the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District. It was created to regulate water well drilling and production from wells within Kendall County, and it holds regular meetings on the second Monday of each month at 9 Toepperwein Road in Boerne. It also maintains the well registration and permitting records that a seller now needs to reference on the new disclosure.
Most domestic wells are exempt from full permitting, but exempt does not mean unregistered, and the district can still require registration, spacing compliance, and, during drought stages, production limits even on exempt wells. A seller who has never contacted the district before now has a reason to.
A County That Skips the Building Code but Not the Septic Permit
Kendall County does not enforce a general building code in the unincorporated county. Instead it runs a development-permit process that covers septic, rural addressing and access, floodplain, and subdivision platting. That surprises people moving in from cities with conventional permitting departments, and it matters directly here because the septic side of that process is the same file the new water disclosure touches.
There is one meaningful exemption worth knowing. Under the statewide rule, a single-family home on ten or more acres can skip the septic permit step entirely if every part of the system sits at least 100 feet from the property lines, the effluent stays on the tract, the home is the only dwelling on it, and the system isn't causing a nuisance or polluting groundwater. The exemption removes the permit, not the construction standard, and karst limestone conditions common around Boerne usually push installers toward an aerobic treatment system regardless. Aerobic systems, unlike a conventional tank and drain field, legally require an ongoing maintenance contract with semi-annual professional inspections. A seller who let that contract lapse has a gap to explain, not just on inspection day but on the new disclosure form itself.
Properties in the southeast corner of the county, near Herff Falls on Cibolo Creek, carry one more wrinkle. That area falls inside the regulated Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, which can trigger a separate water pollution abatement plan requirement through the state. Most of Kendall County sits outside that zone, but a parcel near that edge is worth checking specifically rather than assuming.
A Well Is Not a Well Is Not a Well
Even setting the paperwork aside, water in Boerne behaves differently from one tract to the next. Local drillers describe pulling from the Middle and Lower Trinity Aquifer, with wells commonly running from a few hundred feet to more than a thousand feet depending on where the limestone sits underneath a given property. That variability is exactly why a driller's log and a pump test matter more here than almost anywhere else in the region Nathan Dumas serves. Two houses on the same road can have wells with very different depths, yields, and long-term reliability, and the new disclosure gives buyers a formal channel to ask for that history up front instead of discovering it after closing.
What to Gather Before You List
Sellers who want the new form to be a formality rather than a delay should have these on hand before a property goes on the market:
- The driller's State Well Report, which documents depth, construction, and initial yield
- Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District registration or permit records for any well on the property
- The most recent water quality test and, if available, a pump test showing current output
- Aerobic system maintenance contract records, if the property uses one
- Any documentation of severed or leased groundwater rights, if the property has ever been part of a larger tract
None of this requires a lawyer to assemble. It does require starting before a buyer's option period is already ticking.
For Buyers New to Well Water
Many of the people relocating into Boerne for a hospital leadership role or an executive transfer have spent their entire adult lives on city water and never thought about a well twice. The new disclosure is, in a real sense, built for exactly that buyer. A blank or unknown answer on the form isn't disqualifying, but it is a signal to slow down and verify rather than assume. Groundwater belongs to the landowner under Texas's rule of capture, but that right is shaped by local district rules, and surface water is managed separately by the state under a permit system. Buying the land does not automatically hand over the right to draw from a creek that crosses it. Those distinctions rarely come up in a city subdivision. They come up constantly on Hill Country acreage.
A Short FAQ
Does this form apply to every home sale in Boerne? It applies broadly across Texas but the details of what a seller must disclose depend on the property. It does not apply to residential condominium contracts, and its relevance is highest for rural, acreage, and private-well properties, which describes a large share of Boerne's inventory outside city limits.
Can a seller just answer "unknown" and move on? Yes, and the form allows for that. What it does is shift the diligence burden onto the buyer's option period, which is precisely the moment neither side wants a delay.
Does living inside Boerne's city limits mean this form is irrelevant? Mostly, if the home is fully on municipal water and sewer with no wells, ponds, or surface water features, the answers are short. The complexity concentrates in the unincorporated county and any property that has ever had a well, even one capped decades ago.
If you're preparing to list a well or septic property in the Boerne area, or you're relocating in and trying to understand what a well disclosure actually means for your offer, Nathan Dumas has walked this paperwork with enough Hill Country sellers to know where the gaps usually hide. Let's connect before the option period starts, not during it.
