Kaufman County authorized 475 septic systems in 2025, and 443 of them, 93 percent, were surface-irrigation systems: an aerobic unit and a spray field. Nineteen were drip, ten low-pressure dosed, three “other,” and none were standard trench or leaching chamber systems. The year before ran the same way: 514 authorized, 488 spray. TCEQ publishes the counts in its annual authorized-agent reports; this page re-added every Kaufman row for both years.
The exception sits at the lake. Within 2,000 feet of the Cedar Creek Reservoir flood pool, the Tarrant Regional Water District is the permitting authority under its own 2010 Order, and Section 10(E) of that Order prohibits “all new OSSF utilizing surface irrigation” there because the reservoir is a drinking-water supply. The district’s Kaufman County lines in TCEQ’s reports are drip and nothing else: three of three in 2024, four of four in 2025.
Everywhere else, the ground decides. The 1977 USDA survey of Kaufman and Rockwall Counties splits the area between “the Texas Blacklands and the Texas Claypan area.” It puts about 19 percent of it in the Houston Black-Heiden association, “very slowly permeable, calcareous soils that are clayey throughout,” with the Crockett-Mabank claypan soils on another 20 percent and the Trinity-Kaufman floodplain clays on 14 percent. NRCS’s description of Houston Black, a clay named for this county’s 1947 soil correlation, reads 40 to 60 percent clay and dry-season cracks half an inch to four inches wide that stay open 90 to 150 days a year.
NRCS maps Kaufman together with Rockwall County as one survey area (TX612, 49 soil map units, September 2025 data). Run through Soil Data Access for this page, 36 of those units come back “Very limited” for a septic absorption field on their dominant soil, four “Somewhat limited,” none “Not limited”: water moves too slowly through 30 of them, and 11 flood. Houston Black clay is the largest unit at 77,684 acres. A conventional drainfield rarely clears TCEQ’s site criteria on that ground, so the aerobic spray system is the county default.
The county’s 2019 Order, in force since TCEQ approved it on February 11, 2022, adds rules to match. Every single-family tract needs a permit “regardless of acreage size,” so the state’s 10-acre exemption does not apply here. A lot platted since January 1, 1988 needs at least one usable acre on a public water supply and two usable acres on a private well. Only a professional engineer or a registered sanitarian holding the site-evaluator certification may do the site evaluation and design. No homeowner may install a system without a TCEQ installer license. Every aerobic system must carry a maintenance contract with inspections every four months, and spray heads must be pop-up heads that run only between midnight and 5 a.m.
Kaufman County Development Services in Kaufman permits the unincorporated county and, per TCEQ’s agent register, the Kaufman County portions of thirteen cities, including Forney, Crandall, Kemp, Mabank, and the county’s slivers of Dallas and Mesquite. Terrell, Oak Ridge and Heath permit inside their own limits; the Texas permit authority table lists all five. Kaufman County had 209,235 residents in the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate, 11,225 more than a year earlier and 63,898 more than its April 2020 base of 145,337.
Outside Terrell, Oak Ridge, and Heath, and beyond 2,000 feet of Cedar Creek Reservoir, septic permits come from Kaufman County Development Services, 101 N Houston St, Kaufman, (469) 376-4127. Within those three cities, the city issues permits; near the lake, the Tarrant Regional Water District does.
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Tarrant Regional Water District Authorized Agent Billing
Covers w/in 2000 ft of: Cedar Creek Reservoir Flood Pool (Henderson, Kaufman); Richland-Chambers Reservoir Flood Pool (Freestone, Navarro); Eagle Mountain Lake Conservation Pool (Tarrant, Wise); Lake Bridgeport Conservation Pool (Jack, Wise)
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.
This county’s full guide is still in production — the authority contact shown here is the official source in the meantime.
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
Kaufman County permits septic in the unincorporated county plus several named cities under its own Kaufman County OSSF Order, TCEQ-approved February 11, 2022. Texas designates a county an authorized agent only after the commissioners court adopts such an order and TCEQ approves it (Health and Safety Code § 366.031), and § 366.032(b) makes that order prevail wherever it is stricter than the state rules in 30 TAC Chapter 285. Read the order before siting a system.
Nothing in Kaufman 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 (67.6% of rated soils), followed by flooding (21.7%). NRCS rates 76.4% of rated ground very limited for a standard soil absorption field, 45.7% for subsurface drip and 45.7% for surface application with disinfection. Where a conventional field will not pass, subsurface drip is usually the route that does.
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