Plenty of rural Texans assume they can legally build their own septic system. In Burleson County, the Commissioners Court closed that door outright: construction, installation, alteration, and extension of any on-site system must be performed by a licensed installer. Homeowners “may not construct, install, extend or alter an on-site sewage facility of any type.” The county didn’t arrive there abstractly. Its order justification, filed with TCEQ in 2023, is unusually candid: soil types and groundwater levels swing widely across the county, some slopes are simply unsuitable, and Burleson “has encountered OSSF failures in areas of the County where lot sizes are below one acre.” The response was written into law: permits required regardless of acreage, and new subdivision lots set at a 1-acre minimum with public water or 2 acres on individual wells, both stricter than state baselines. The county says plainly it will enforce the order aggressively, civilly and criminally.
The terrain behind those rules: Post Oak Belt country, undulating to hilly, except for the Brazos River’s broad alluvial valley, flat bottomland where groundwater rides high seasonally, blanketing nearly a quarter of the county’s eastern edge. Drinking water comes largely from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, hard but heavily relied on, one more reason failures weren’t tolerable. Around Somerville Lake’s 11,000 acres, weekend places and RV setups add pressure; the county now requires RV-park systems designed for 80 gallons per space per day, bluntly noting that recent parks “are being used as permanent residential units.”
Day-to-day process is small-county practical: a 911 address verification letter before you apply, no emailed applications, an Authorization to Construct valid for one year, and a recorded affidavit plus a maintenance contract when the system type calls for it. Volume is modest, with 222 systems authorized in 2024, 1,933 over the decade, and 69 percent surface-irrigation aerobic. But for a county of 18,000 next door to College Station’s spillover growth, septic is simply how houses work here. Installation planning starts with a licensed installer by law; the Burleson County permit guide walks the sequence, and pumping costs complete the picture.
Burleson County office: Courthouse, 100 W. Buck St., Suite 303, Caldwell, (979) 567-2360, weekdays 8–5. Application sequence here.
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New installs and major repairs need a permit from the local authorized agent — usually the county, sometimes a city — and the rules that bind are the local ones.
Our permit guide covers fees, required professionals and every step.
Four things decide what you can build and what it costs: zoning, environmental protections, power for aerobic systems, and the ground itself. We publish each one only where we have checked it — and say so plainly where the answer is “same as the rest of Texas”.
Zoning & land use
Burleson County issues the septic permit for the whole county, under an on-site sewage facility order the commissioners court adopted and TCEQ approved (Health and Safety Code § 366.031). Section 366.032(b) makes that order prevail wherever it is stricter than 30 TAC Chapter 285. Texas grants county zoning power only in named places, and Burleson County is one: Local Government Code Chapter 231, Subchapter J, covers Lake Somerville.
Nothing in Burleson County changes this.
Texas adds a separate approval path over the Edwards Aquifer recharge, transition and contributing zones, where TCEQ requires an Edwards Aquifer Protection Plan under 30 TAC Chapter 213. Elsewhere the Chapter 285 rules stand on their own.
The dominant constraint here is clayey subsoil that water moves through too slowly (46.7% of rated soils), followed by flooding (24.3%). NRCS rates 61.5% of rated ground very limited for a standard soil absorption field, 52.9% for subsurface drip and 52.6% for surface application with disinfection.
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