§ 113.008.Authority of Regulatory Agencies; Compliance with Regulatory Order

A district can be ordered to stop delivering water. This section decides what that means for the contract.

The chapter does not limit the authority of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or any other state regulatory agency. The waiver of immunity changes nothing about who regulates water.

Compliance with a curtailment order is not a breach of contract for purposes of this chapter.

The order must expressly curtail water delivery to a specific electric generating facility. A general conservation directive, or an order aimed at the basin at large, is not what the subsection describes.

That specificity is the whole safeguard. Without it, any regulatory pressure could be recast as a defense to every contract in the district.

The rule puts the district in an answerable position. A supplier ordered by the state to stop delivering to a named plant should not be choosing between the order and a judgment.

It also tells a purchaser where to look. If delivery stops under a regulatory order, the dispute belongs in front of the regulator rather than in a breach claim.

The subsection allocates a risk rather than resolving a dispute. Somebody bears the loss when a regulator halts delivery, and this chapter says it is not the district.

Parties can address the same risk in the contract. Force majeure and regulatory-change clauses cover this ground, and Section 113.003 keeps remedies within whatever the agreement provides.