A friend of mine was going to dam up a creek on his property down in the Texas hill country. He owns several hundred acres and the property already has what Texans call 'tanks' which are small ponds with small dams.

I introduced him to a friend of mine here in Oklahoma that builds dams just like he was talking about and after finding out what was involved in doing it right he just decided against it. Lots and lots of regulations in Texas if you are going to dam up a creek.

Fifty years ago if you wanted to dam a creek to build a tank the state would not only let you but they would many times pay for it. The goal was to catch water for your cattle and not let it run off into the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas once put great importance on the capture of water but no more. The state has not done much to improve the water base for the last 15 years or so and it shows. Well, they have passed a lot of regulations making it harder to build a dam but that has not helped with the water shortage the state is currently dealing with.

I asked a friend that has a pond had the inspector been there to inspect his. His pond is about 40 years old and he said that he had received some fed funding when he built it and he had to build per their spec to be eligible for the funding.

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Jim

You might have passed up an opportunity. Dress up like him and go snooping around stealing the good stuff (authorized by calls to the police and their reassurance of legitimacy) and he gets blamed

No laws? What authority had they?

Here you go.

The DNR can go anywhere in the state without needing a search warrant.

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Jim

That sounds like the old Texas way of doing things. The state wanted the small dams built right so they would actually catch water and not just create a problem years down the road.