Conroe City Council has twice put off paying a $2.6 million bill from the San Jacinto River Authority, an end-of-year true-up tied to the city pumping less than the agreed minimum. The city came up short of a four-billion-gallon minimum baked into its 2025 settlement with the authority, and six wells were down.
According to an invoice from SJRA, Conroe pumped 2.9 billion gallons of groundwater over the past year, well below the four-billion-gallon threshold the city agreed to meet under last year's settlement, as reported by Community Impact. The authority is asking Conroe to pay the remainder of its required pumpage fees by Nov. 18. The Houston Chronicle reports that the council deferred action on the invoice twice, once on Oct. 22 and again on Nov. 5, 2026, as city leaders push back on the size of the bill.
Wells Down, Pumping Falls Short
Public Works Director Jason Miller said the city pumped less groundwater than expected this past year because six wells were down, per the same Community Impact account. The Chronicle reports Miller said two of those wells were redrills, and Conroe was completely out of groundwater at that point, and that officials knew two wells were down when the settlement was first reached — but had no prediction that four more would fail on top of that. Had those wells stayed operational, Miller said, Conroe would have come much closer to meeting the four-billion-gallon requirement, according to the Chronicle.
Mayor Duke Coon framed the situation bluntly. “We are being fined because we didn’t pump enough groundwater,” he told Community Impact, in a quote that captures the irony at the center of the standoff: the city is being asked to make a payment after pumping less than the agreed minimum. The Chronicle reports Coon said the authority's broader goal is to reduce groundwater pumpage in favor of surface water, and that he hoped Conroe could mitigate the cost given that it pulled less from the aquifer than its cap allowed.
A Settlement Years in the Making
The payment dispute traces back to a settlement the City of Conroe and SJRA approved in August 2025, a deal the City of Conroe says ended litigation tied to the authority's Groundwater Reduction Plan. Under the deal, Conroe agreed to pay the full amount it had short-paid SJRA since 2017 and held in escrow, and to begin paying current rates for treated Lake Conroe surface water and its groundwater pumpage fee. The Chronicle reports that amount released from escrow totaled $24 million.
In exchange, the city said SJRA agreed to provide additional surface water, cut Conroe's GRP contract term from 80 years to 40 years, and forgive penalties and fees on past-due amounts. The Chronicle reports Public Works Director Jason Miller said the contract secures the city's future water needs, and that Conroe has no obligation to participate in future phases of the Groundwater Reduction Plan or any expansion of its water treatment plant.
The roots of the fight go back even further. The city's own account notes the disputes date to 2016, when Conroe challenged wholesale water-rate increases tied to SJRA's 2010 Groundwater Reduction Plan contract. In 2024, the Supreme Court of Texas reversed and remanded SJRA's contract claims against Conroe and Magnolia, ordering further proceedings to resolve the authority's claims on the merits, according to the Supreme Court of Texas opinion hosted by Justia. The Chronicle reports the council asked city administrators to negotiate a settlement with the river authority in February 2025, and that the city agreed top executives from both sides would handle the talks directly.
Why Wells Keep Failing
The Chronicle reports Conroe runs its wells to failure rather than performing costly preventive underground maintenance, a practice the paper says is common among municipalities because of the expense involved — even as the city performs regular proactive maintenance above ground. A single well may last anywhere from five to fifteen years, and downhole maintenance can run $300,000 to $600,000 per well each time it's needed, according to the Chronicle. Conroe currently operates 21 active water wells.
That maintenance math is playing out against a backdrop of rising demand. The city is on track to pump more than five billion gallons in 2027, the Chronicle reports — well above the four-billion-gallon floor that triggered this year's dispute. A separate Community Impact report found Conroe immediately needs six new water wells and could need up to 13 by 2037, with each well estimated to cost between $12 million and $15 million. That strain isn't unique to Conroe: groundwater pumping across Montgomery County already tops 120,000 acre-feet a year, more than double what the aquifers naturally replenish, according to The Cool Down, which also reports a pending proposal would push the allowed countywide total toward 200,000 acre-feet.
Political Blame and Ongoing Talks
Not everyone on the council sees the current predicament the same way. Council member John Sellars blamed the previous administration and council members for the situation, the Chronicle reports, while council member David Hairel said he wasn't involved in negotiating the original agreement but believes the settlement delivered lasting benefits to Conroe residents.
SJRA officials confirmed negotiations with the city were continuing, the Chronicle reports. SJRA's Heather Ramsey described the $2.6 million payment as a year-end true-up meant to ensure Conroe meets its agreed minimum pumpage, framing the invoice as a mechanism built into the settlement rather than a separate penalty. Separately, SJRA committee materials dated Aug. 24, 2026 listed Conroe's annual surface-water allocation for the fiscal year at just over 3.1 billion gallons, with roughly 2.4 billion gallons already delivered and about 710 million gallons remaining, according to the San Jacinto River Authority.
With the Nov. 18 deadline for the remaining pumpage fees approaching, council has not yet acted on the invoice, and it remains unclear what the ongoing talks between Conroe and SJRA will ultimately produce.
