Tex. Water Code § 56.140

This is the official text of Tex. Water Code § 56.140, part of Texas’s Water Code — governs water rights and water resource management.

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§ 56.140. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IMPROVEMENTS.

Official statutory text

(a) Canals, drains, ditches, and levees which are constructed by a district and watercourses which are cleaned or constructed by a district are the public property of the district.

(b) A person who owns land in the district may drain into one or more of the public drains, and at his own expense, the landowner may make drains according to the natural slope of the land through other lands intervening between his land and the nearest public drain or watercourse or along any public highway.

(c) Before constructing any drains, the landowner shall notify the board of his intention to construct a drain through another person's land or along a public highway, and the directors shall go on the premises and acting as a jury of view shall determine the place for constructing the drain.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.