Bulkheads & Retaining Walls
New walls and replacement of failed ones under a BRA Improvement Permit — galvanized steel, vinyl, FRP composite or heavy timber, with tiebacks and drainage detailed for a drawdown.
Lakes We Serve · Hood County, TX
Boat docks, boathouses and retaining walls on Lake Granbury.
A hundred and three miles of shoreline threaded down the old Brazos channel — and one landowner, the Brazos River Authority, standing between your plans and the water.
The Permit Path
Two BRA permits cover almost everything you want built.
The Brazos River Authority owns Lake Granbury and the land beneath it. Its project office sits at Observation Point, 4552 Mambrino Highway, and the Lake Granbury Lake Office answers at 817-573-3212.
The first is an On-Water Facility Permit. In BRA's own words it “provides lakeside property owners the opportunity to construct and maintain private facilities over the reservoir bed” — docks, boathouses and similar structures out over the water.
The second is an Improvement Permit, and it is the one that governs the ground. It covers constructing a retaining wall or bulkhead along the shoreline, dredging the lake bottom under a dock, removing stumps from the lake bottom, and maintenance on an existing private boat ramp. Most Granbury projects of any size touch both permits, because the wall and the dock are one job in practice even though they are two applications on paper.
Both are applied for through the Lake Granbury Lake Office, and BRA states the timing without ambiguity: construction may not begin until the permit has been approved and returned to you. There is no starting on the wall while the paperwork catches up.
There is also a requirement that decides who can even bid the work. A contractor operating on the lake needs a BRA business operation permit, and BRA keeps a list of permitted contractors that it will email to a property owner on request. Everyone holding a permit is bound by the BRA Shoreline Management Plan and Customer Guide and by the Regulations for Governance for Brazos River Authority Lakes and Associated Lands. Separately, if you want to pump lake water for irrigation, a Residential Water Permit covers up to 5,000 gallons a month — $25, rising to $50 for applications made on or after September 1, 2025.
BRA does not publish fee amounts for the On-Water Facility or Improvement permits, so those get confirmed with the Lake Office as part of planning the job rather than guessed at from a web page.
103
Miles of shoreline
693′
Conservation pool, BRA datum
75′
Approximate maximum depth
1969
Impoundment began September 15
Design for the Range
Granbury looks like a constant-level lake. BRA says otherwise.
In normal operation the lake holds within a foot or two of full — the recorded swing over the last year has been roughly 1.3 feet. But BRA tells lakeside owners it is normal for levels to fluctuate, “possibly dropping as much as 33 feet,” and Texas Parks & Wildlife lists fluctuation of up to 30 feet. Design for the drought case, not the good year.
1
Know the elevations
Conservation pool is 693 feet on BRA's local datum, published as 692.70 ft NGVD29 on Water Data for Texas. The emergency spillway crest is also 693 feet, top of dam is 706.5 feet, and dead pool is 640 feet. Those numbers bracket everything a fixed structure has to survive.
2
Lifts and slips sized low
A lift set for a full lake is a lift you cannot use in a drawdown year. Slip depth, lift travel and dredge depth get planned against a low-water case so the boat comes out of the water in a dry summer too.
3
Walls detailed for drawdown loading
A retaining wall's worst day is not high water — it is a dropped lake with a saturated bank behind it. Tieback layout, backfill and drainage are detailed for that condition, not just for the waterline you see on the site visit.
4
No promises about access
BRA warns that an approved permit does not guarantee water access, because levels fluctuate. A permit authorizes a structure; it does not authorize a lake level. Honest planning treats those as two separate things.
Bottom & Bank
A narrow ribbon of water over an old river channel.
Lake Granbury is a long, sinuous impoundment of the Brazos behind De Cordova Bend Dam — 103 miles of shoreline packed into roughly 8,300 acres.
The old river channel still runs through the middle of it, carrying timber and submerged brush. Aquatic vegetation is sparse — bulrush, cattails and water stargrass — and the water runs clear to stained. Texas Parks & Wildlife names boat houses and piers as the predominant structure on the lake, which is another way of saying the shoreline is already heavily walled. On a lake with this much frontage per acre of water, retaining walls, bulkheads and boathouses are the standard treatment rather than the exception, and replacing a failing wall is the most common job on the water.
Bank conditions vary lot to lot along a shoreline that cuts through Cretaceous country, and BRA and the state surveys do not publish a soil map you could design a wall from. That is a site visit, not a web page: Dave confirms what is behind the existing wall and what the bank is made of before a material is chosen.
Scope of Work
What Shoretech can build on Lake Granbury.
Every item below maps to one of the two BRA permits — and to a lake that can drop a long way.
Custom Boathouses
Covered slips and entertainment-grade boathouses over the reservoir bed under an On-Water Facility Permit, with lifts sized for low water.
Boat Docks & Piers
Fixed and floating docks along a narrow, deep channel lake where the useful water can be close in or a long way out depending on the year.
Precision Dredging
Dredging the lake bottom under a dock and stump removal — both explicitly named in BRA's Improvement Permit — with material pumped for backfill reuse where it can be.
Around the Lake
Granbury's waterfront, community by community.
Lakeshore development boomed from the 1970s through 2000 and has never really stopped.
Towns and waterfront subdivisions
- Granbury
- DeCordova and DeCordova Bend Estates
- Acton
- Oak Trail Shores
- Pecan Plantation
- Indian Harbor
- Comanche Harbor
- Harbor Lakes
- Grand Harbor
- Tolar and Cresson nearby
Marinas, ramps and parks
- Lake Granbury Marina, 2323 S. Morgan St. — 121 wet slips, 103 with lifts, floating fuel dock
- Indian Harbor community marina, ramp and slip rentals
- BRA parks at Thorp Spring, Hunter Park, Rough Creek, De Cordova Bend and Observation Point
- City of Granbury City Beach and City Park
- Hewlett Park
Lake Granbury impounds the Brazos River behind De Cordova Bend Dam in Hood County; BRA also cites Johnson County for the upper reaches, while the Texas Water Development Board, Texas Parks & Wildlife and the Handbook of Texas name Hood alone. Surface acreage is published three different ways — about 8,310 acres by TPWD, 8,281.6 acres at conservation pool by TWDB, and 8,172 by the Handbook of Texas.
Questions We Hear
Lake Granbury FAQ.
Which Brazos River Authority permit do I need?
Usually both. An On-Water Facility Permit covers private facilities built over the reservoir bed — docks, boathouses and similar structures. An Improvement Permit covers the shoreline side: constructing a retaining wall or bulkhead, dredging the lake bottom under a dock, removing stumps, and maintenance on an existing private boat ramp. Both go through the Lake Granbury Lake Office at 817-573-3212, and BRA is explicit that construction may not begin until the permit has been approved and returned to you.
Does my contractor need to be approved by BRA?
Yes. A contractor working on the lake needs a Brazos River Authority business operation permit, and BRA maintains a list of permitted contractors that it will email to a property owner on request. Permit holders also have to comply with the BRA Shoreline Management Plan and Customer Guide and the Regulations for Governance for Brazos River Authority Lakes and Associated Lands.
The lake is always full. Why design for a drawdown?
Because BRA tells lakeside owners it is normal for lake levels to fluctuate, possibly dropping as much as 33 feet, and Texas Parks & Wildlife lists fluctuation of up to 30 feet. Day to day Granbury holds within a foot or two of the 693-foot conservation pool, but a dock, lift or wall that only works at full pool is a structure designed for the good years. BRA also states plainly that an approved permit does not guarantee water access.
Nearby Water
More North and Central Texas lakes.
Start With a Conversation
Planning a project on Lake Granbury?
Tell Dave what the existing wall is doing, how far the water drops in a bad year, and what you want the finished waterfront to do. The BRA permit sequence follows from the design, not the other way around.