Oct 21, 2025

Mapping Metro Water Use: Sources, Industries, and Consumption

A deep dive into metro-level data reveals how industry and geography influence Texas’ water resources.

Daniel Oney

Texas is enormous, sitting where the wet Sunbelt transitions to the dry Sunbelt. This means Texans face different water circumstances depending on where they live. Discussions of water supply and demand at the state level have some conceptual value, but, like real estate market trends, water is local.

Water supply comes from three major sources: groundwater, surface water, and reused water. Overall, groundwater accounts for a little more than half the total water supplied to Texas water users (54 percent.) Aquifers lay under much of Texas, but their importance tends to be higher in the west and south. Groundwater, produced by wells, includes brackish water that may be desalinated before use. Surface water, which comes from rivers and lakes, provides 42 percent and is most plentiful and consistently available in the eastern third of the state. Four percent of total water supplied comes from reuse.

Because of this pattern, none of the state’s 25 metropolitan areas find their water sources in the exact same proportions as the state average, although El Paso and College Station-Bryan come the closest (Figure 1). Four of the top five groundwater supply markets are in the western part of the state: Lubbock, Amarillo, San Angelo, and El Paso. San Antonio rounds out this top five. Three of the top five metro areas most reliant on surface water are in South Texas: Brownsville, McAllen, and Corpus Christi. The other two are in North Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth and Wichita Falls. The top water re-users, by share, are in the west and south central part of the state: Midland, Odessa, Laredo, San Antonio, and Abilene.

This horizontal stacked bar chart, titled "Figure 1. Share of Total Water Sourced," illustrates the reliance of various metro areas on different water sources: Groundwater, Surface Water, and Reuse. Each bar represents a different metro area, showing the proportion of water sourced from each category. Most metro areas heavily rely on either Groundwater (blue) or Surface Water (green), with Surface Water appearing to be the dominant source for many, such as College Station, Victoria, Sherman, Tyler, Waco, Houston, Longview, Austin, Texarkana, Abilene, Corpus Christi, Beaumont, Killeen, DFW, Brownsville, and McAllen. Several cities, including Lubbock, Amarillo, San Antonio, San Angelo, El Paso, Midland, Odessa, and Laredo, show a more significant reliance on Groundwater. Reuse (orange) constitutes a smaller percentage across most metro areas, although it is visible in nearly all of them, indicating its presence as a supplementary water source.

Source: Texas Real Estate Research Center analysis of Texas Water Development Board data

The metro areas differ not only in water source, but in total per-capita water use (Figure 2). The range of Austin’s lowest per-day use (166 gallons) to Lubbock’s highest (1,434 gallons) is a factor of 8.6. Why such a difference? The answer comes down to the local development patterns and industry differences, especially what happens in the rural portions of a metro area.

This horizontal bar chart, "Figure 2. Per-Capita Water Use," displays the Metro Per-Capita Use in Gallons/Day for All Uses in 2022 across various metro areas. The chart clearly illustrates that water use per person varies substantially. Lubbock has the highest per-capita water use at 1,434 gallons/day, followed by College Station at approximately 970 gallons/day. Other cities like Beaumont, Midland, Amarillo, and San Angelo also show high per-capita use, ranging from around 700 to 800 gallons/day. Towards the lower end of the spectrum, cities such as Killeen, DFW, Texarkana, Sherman, Tyler, and Abilene have significantly lower per-capita water use, with Austin reporting the lowest at 166 gallons/day. This highlights a wide range of water consumption patterns across the surveyed metro areas.

Note: Average gallons per day, 2022. Water use for the Arkansas portion of Texarkana not available.
Source: Texas Real Estate Research Center analysis of Texas Water Development Board data

A metropolitan area consists of one or more counties where the workforce commutes to inlying central cities. The share of a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) that is developed with cities and suburbs varies. Austin and its suburbs account for far more of its MSA water profile than Lubbock, a small city in a mostly rural multi-county MSA. Further, the rural land surrounding Lubbock is intensely farmed. Since agriculture is a relatively heavy water user, Lubbock’s daily use reflects many gallons that irrigate crops.

Water use can be summarized into three broad categories: residential and commercial (including manufacturing), energy and power (e.g., mining and cooling water for generators), and agriculture (crop irrigation and livestock). These determine the amount of water a region uses per person. Of the top ten per-capita users, five metros dedicate most of their water to agriculture: Lubbock, Amarillo, San Angelo, McAllen, and Brownsville. In addition, agriculture is the second largest use in College Station, Victoria, and Wichita Falls. College Station’s largest use is for power generation. Beaumont’s primary use is manufacturing (falling in the residential and commercial grouping). In Midland the majority goes to oil and gas production. Most of the low water users are metros where households and businesses account for the most use.

This horizontal bar chart, titled "Figure 3. Municipal Water Customer Per-Capita Use," illustrates the Metro Per-Capita Use in Gallons/Day for Municipal purposes in 2022. The chart suggests that urban customers of public water utilities tend to have similar daily use, though there is still variation. Amarillo shows the highest per-capita municipal water use at 217 gallons/day, closely followed by Beaumont, Waco, and Tyler, all above 200 gallons/day. Cities like Lubbock, Wichita Falls, College Station, Abilene, and Odessa also show relatively high municipal use, generally above 160 gallons/day. Several metro areas, highlighted in orange, including DFW, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, fall within a mid-range of per-capita use, typically between 130 and 150 gallons/day. Towards the lower end, Brownsville reports 123 gallons/day, and Texarkana has the lowest municipal per-capita use among the listed areas, indicating a more conservative daily consumption pattern.

Note: Municipal use includes mostly residential, commercial and institutional customers. Water use for the Arkansas portion of Texarkana not available.
Source: Texas Real Estate Research Center analysis of Texas Water Development Board data

Residential, commercial, and institutional water use differs little from place to place (Figure 3). Most of these uses are supplied by municipal water utilities. Isolating just the municipal users reveals similar use from MSA to MSA. The highest municipal water-use market, Amarillo, uses only 1.8 times the water of Brownsville, in per-capita terms. Highlighting the four largest metro areas, where residential and commercial uses overwhelm all others, there is only a 10 percent difference from the lowest use in Houston, to the highest in DFW.

It’s clear that water policy and planning is complicated in Texas. The geological and economic history of the state’s regions and cities means surprising differences in water supply and demand. The state is fortunate to have a rich data set that captures these differences and can inform both private sector practice and public policy at all levels.

Daniel Oney, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is research director with the Texas Real Estate Research Center.