A couple who kept a home and grazed cattle on 126 acres northwest of Inez, in Victoria County, watched their land flood after the man developing a subdivision next door built a dam and berms. He admitted he kept “building [the berms] up” from 2016 on, even though he knew their land was flooding. His own employee testified the developer told him to fill ditches to “really flood them out.” A jury found against him, and a Texas court ordered the dam and berms removed.
The couple bought the land in 2013, when, the evidence showed, surface water drained across it in its natural northwest-to-southeast pattern into a creek tributary that ran through the property next door. That land, about 50 acres owned by the developer’s company, K&K Inez Properties, where he also lived, was being turned into a neighborhood called Pura Vida.
The couple said the dam and berms impounded the water and pushed it back onto their pasture. The appeals court found no evidence their land had flooded before the dam and berm went up…