Do you need an Edwards Aquifer plan to build in Comal or Kendall County?

30 TAC 213.3(8) defines the Edwards Aquifer it regulates as the belt of carbonate rock running through eight counties: Kinney, Uvalde, Medina, Bexar, Comal, Hays, Travis and Williamson. The contributing zone definition at 213.22(2) lists the same set, all areas within Uvalde, Medina, Bexar and Comal plus named parts of the other four. Because the rule lists whole counties, TCEQ draws the outer boundary of the contributing zone on the county line. So a commercial building in Comal County has an aquifer question before ground is disturbed, and 213.3(4) puts that work with TCEQ Region 13 in San Antonio.

Kendall County is not on the list

Kendall County appears nowhere in 30 TAC Chapter 213. All 24 sections were read: it is absent from the aquifer definition, from the contributing zone county areas, from the two county-named subchapter titles, and from the 213.3(4) regional office assignments, which send every regulated county to Region 11 or Region 13 and Kendall to neither. TCEQ's fee form prints no Kendall box and the help line lists no Kendall number. On this record, Chapter 213 does not reach Kendall County.

The recharge and transition zones are legally whatever area TCEQ's official maps designate. If your parcel sits near the Comal County line, check it on the map viewer before you design. For what the county requires, see Kendall County permitting and building in Boerne.

TCEQ maps four regulatory zones: Recharge, Transition, Contributing, and Contributing Within the Transition Zone.

Recharge zone. Where the Edwards units crop out, plus nearby outcrops with caves, sinkholes, faults or fractures. A water pollution abatement plan (WPAP, form TCEQ-0584) is required for any regulated activity there: constructing buildings, utility lines and roads, and any clearing or excavation that alters the site's topographic, geologic or recharge characteristics. There is no acreage floor.

Contributing zone. Where runoff flows downgradient to the recharge zone, upstream and generally north and northwest of it. A contributing zone plan (CZP, form TCEQ-10257) covers the same activities, but 213.21(b) applies the subchapter only to work disturbing at least five acres, or smaller work that is part of a larger common plan of development or sale with the potential to disturb five or more acres. TCEQ's workflow page says a site wholly in the contributing zone, under five acres and not part of a larger plan, needs no plan.

Transition zone. The outcrop area next to and south and southeast of the recharge zone. In the list of required plans at 213.5(a) it is named only in the two storage tank entries.

A site partly on the recharge zone and partly on the contributing zone is treated as if all of it were on the recharge zone, and site means the whole area inside the legal boundaries in the application. A few things sit outside the definition of regulated activity: clearing vegetation without disturbing soil and one single-family residence on a lot larger than five acres. Where an activity is exempt from the plan requirement, erosion and sedimentation controls still go in and stay maintained.

A WPAP has four parts under 213.5(b): the application information required by 213.4, site location data and maps, a geologic assessment, and a technical report. The assessment identifies all potential pathways for contaminant movement to the aquifer and is signed, sealed and dated by a Texas licensed professional geoscientist. The technical report states the site size in acres, the projected population, and the amount and type of impervious cover expected after construction; a contributing zone report adds parking lot area.

Permanent stormwater controls have to remove 80 percent of the incremental increase in annual total suspended solids loading the project causes. Their plans and calculations are prepared by or under a Texas licensed professional engineer, who certifies in writing to the regional office, within 30 days of site completion, that they were built as designed. TCEQ may waive other permanent controls for a small business site holding impervious cover to 20 percent or less.

If the building will be on septic, the plan carries a written statement from the local authorized agent that the site is suitable for on-site sewage under 30 TAC Chapter 285. See the septic and OSSF guide. Only the owner, the owner's agent, or someone with the right to possess and control the property may file it. An independent builder who works Comal County prices the building and the slab; the aquifer plan is the owner's filing.

TCEQ prices the application on two things: the acreage of the entire legal parcel described in the application, and the development type. TCEQ's fee form, revised February 24, 2015, prints a schedule headed effective May 1, 2008 and applies the same table to abatement plans, contributing zone plans and modifications of either.

An exception request is $500 and an extension of time is $150. The 2015 form reads check or money order, while TCEQ's newer review page says payment goes through TCEQ EPay after administrative review, and the file does not move to technical review until it clears. A withdrawn or denied application forfeits its fee once technical review is underway. None of this sits in the building budget the cost calculator prices.

Under 213.4(e) the executive director has 30 days from receipt at the regional office to declare the application administratively complete or deficient, and 90 days after that to finish the technical review. Section 213.23(e) applies the same clocks to contributing zone plans.

Applications enter a queue first, and TCEQ books that administrative review two weeks out from the day you submit. Within five days of administrative completeness the regional office sends copies to the affected cities, groundwater conservation districts and counties, and anyone may comment for 30 days. In technical review you get 14 days to answer a first notice of deficiency and 14 more for a second; a missing or inadequate second response means the application is withdrawn or denied. Send final plans, because a significant design change after administrative completeness is a mid-review modification.

The rule, the fee form and the help line put a Comal County project with the San Antonio Regional Office at (210) 490-3096, while TCEQ's program page says that since October 16, 2023 all applications and fees are managed by Austin Regional Office staff, (512) 339-2929.

Under 30 TAC 213.4(a)(1), no person may commence construction of a regulated activity until the plan has been filed, reviewed and approved. Commencement is defined at the first disturbance of soil for clearing, grading or excavating. It is a foundation question as much as a building question, so it shows up in slab and foundation scheduling and the commercial build sequence.

Once approved, written notice of intent to commence goes to the regional office at least 48 hours before work starts. If a sensitive feature such as a cave, sinkhole, fault or permeable fracture turns up during construction, regulated activity near it stops until TCEQ reviews a geologist's report and approves the protection method, within one week.

Approval expires two years after issuance unless more than 10 percent of total construction has started, and ends for good if more than 50 percent is not complete within 10 years. Within 30 days of written approval the applicant records in the county deed records that the property is subject to an approved plan, and a new owner is bound by it. Section 213.10 lets the executive director begin enforcement for failure to comply, and a failed condition can bring civil penalties and an injunction; the section prints no dollar figure.

Inside New Braunfels, the city wants TCEQ's answer before it gives its own. The Engineering Division's commercial permit requirements include a TCEQ approval letter for development over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, a drainage report prepared to the city's Drainage and Erosion Control Design Manual, and a soil erosion and sediment control plan.

The grading permit does the same earlier: the application asks whether any part of the property is within the Edwards Aquifer Regulatory Zone, and says TCEQ approval is required before the grading permit issues if it is. City Code Sec. 118-7 requires TCEQ approval before a final plat over the recharge zone is filed for record. Drainage review is priced separately in Appendix D: $250 for a Type 1 development category, $500 for Type 2, $2,000 for Type 3, $2,500 for Type 3 with water quality and $3,000 for Type 3 with a stormwater connection.

The city appears to have no aquifer ordinance of its own. Its Watershed Protection page lists a watershed protection plan for Dry Comal Creek and the Comal River, an MS4 stormwater program and a link to the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, and names no city Edwards Aquifer or water quality ordinance for commercial sites; Chapter 14 of the code, read in full, contains none either. That is an absence in what the city publishes, not a finding that nothing applies.

TCEQ regulates only portions of the Edwards Aquifer and tells landowners to use its Edwards Aquifer Map Viewer to learn whether a project sits over a regulated zone. You can print that map and send it with an application.

TCEQ labels the viewer informational, says it may not be suitable for legal, engineering or surveying purposes, and shows only approximate boundaries. The coverage was digitized from USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles, carries a 40-foot margin of error, and dates from 2001 to 2005; lines known to be incorrect stay in it until the rules are amended. None of the TCEQ pages read here says where inside Comal County the zones sit, so a parcel near a boundary needs a call. TCEQ's program page routes Comal applications and fees to Austin Regional Office staff at (512) 339-2929, and staff take email at [email protected].

The aquifer plan is not the only water approval. Section 213.20(b) says the contributing zone subchapter is not exclusive: TPDES stormwater permits and local ordinances may also apply. TCEQ's construction general permit TXR150000, effective March 5, 2023, covers an acre or more of disturbance where construction stormwater discharges to surface water in the state, and it applies in Kendall County too. For the permit desks, read the commercial permits guide, and for the $50,000 accessibility trigger, the TDLR registration guide.