Water School

Water rights are issued by the State of Texas with a small annual fee necessary to pay the costs of the permitting program at the issuing agency.  In many cases the State of Texas has created special districts, such as the Brazos River Authority, to develop and manage surface water supplies.The cost of building and maintaining dams and reservoirs, and all the other costs for managing water supplies, is not paid by the state and is not supported by any tax revenue.  The revenue to pay those costs...

In Texas, a water supply permit is an authorization from the state to use surface waters for a beneficial use.  Water supply permits are granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.  In some counties, groundwater districts are authorized to issue water supply permits for the use of groundwater.

Mineral water is naturally occurring or prepared water that contains dissolved minerals, elements or gasses, often used therapeutically. Several Brazos River basin towns built industries around local mineral water and its purported healing powers towards the end of the nineteenth century. Those cities included Mineral Wells, Marlin, Waco and others.

A tributary is a small river or stream that merges or flows into a larger river or stream. A river typically has several tributaries.Numerous tributaries feed into the Brazos River including the Clear, Salt and Double Mountain forks of the Brazos as well as the Navasota, Bosque, Nolan, and Little rivers and Yegua Creek. In addition, those tributaries each have several sub-tributaries, including numerous creeks as well as the Leon and San Gabriel Rivers, among others.

An oxbow is a severe bend in a river channel creating a “U” shape and leaving a very narrow strip of land between the two bends.  Many times, erosion will wear through this narrow strip and the course of the river changes leaving a “U” shaped or oxbow lake or a dry riverbed. 

Erosion is the process in which soil is moved or carried away by water, air or other natural processes.