# The Texas water loss audit: who files, and when

URL: https://municorn.us/data/texas-water-loss-audit-requirement/
Updated: 2026-09-08
Tags: data, filing, texas

> **Cite as:** Municorn.us, "The Texas water loss audit: who files, and when", Municorn water loss index, https://municorn.us/data/texas-water-loss-audit-requirement/ (source filings retrieved 2026-09-08).
> **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — reuse and redistribution are permitted with attribution to Municorn.us and a link to this URL.
> **Caveat that must travel with these figures:** "Water loss" is at least three different quantities depending on the jurisdiction, and nothing here supports a comparison between states.

Texas Water Code 16.0121 puts most retail public utilities on an annual water loss audit and the rest on a five-year cycle. Who is on which duty, what is due, and what the state does with it.

Texas Water Code section 16.0121 requires a retail public utility to file a water loss audit with the Texas Water Development Board.

## Who files annually, and who files every five years

A retail public utility with more than 3,300 connections, or with an active financial obligation to the TWDB, files every year. Every other retail public utility files once every five years.

That single rule explains most of what looks like non-compliance in the published record. The five-year cohort files in 2015, 2020 and 2025 and appears to stop filing in 2016 and in 2021: 1,127 systems in the first case and 1,163 in the second, against a median of about 210. It is the statute, not a failure. Before this site describes any system as not having filed, it establishes which duty that system is on.

## When

TWDB states a deadline of May 1. An audit covers the preceding calendar year, and the board's own guidance is that an audit submitted outside the five-year cycle does not satisfy the five-year requirement.

## What the state publishes

TWDB publishes a historical file of the audits it holds. That file is the source of every Texas figure on this site, and each system's page carries the archived cell its figures were read from, with the date the file was retrieved.

## What this page does not tell you

Whether any particular system has filed. That is a statement about the record, and the record is [what we publish per system](/water-loss/tx/), including [the systems on an annual duty with no audit on record](/water-loss/tx/no-audit-on-record/).

_Municorn.us · https://municorn.us/data/texas-water-loss-audit-requirement/ · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · source filings retrieved 2026-09-08_

---