Barbers Hill salt dome, located in the Texas Coastal Plain near Houston, has a long history of resource exploitation, including oil and brine production, storage of hydrocarbons in solution-mined caverns within the salt stock, and disposal of brine into the cap rock. Industrial and municipal facilities are concentrated over the dome, and large amounts of ground water are produced within 12 mi (20 km) of the structure. Subsurface data from closely spaced petroleum, brine-disposal, and water wells were used in characterizing near-dome hydrogeology at Barbers Hill.

In the Rio Grande Embayment of South Texas, the Carrizo Formation (lower Eocene) consists of two sand-rich fluvial depositional systems that grade basinward into several deltaic complexes within the upper part of the Wilcox Group. Data from oil, gas, and water wells provide information on Carrizo fluvial and ground-water flow systems, and outcrop and core data help define component lithofacies.The bed-load channel system contains multistory, multilateral fluvial channel-fill sandstones deposited by broad, sand-rich, dominantly braided streams.

Subsidence at salt domes results from man-induced and natural removal of salt, cap rock, minerals within the cap rock, and supradomal fluids. In the Houston diaper province, Frasch sulfur mining as caused subsidence bowls and collapse sinkholes at 12 of the 14 sulfur productive domes. Vertical subsidence owing to sulfur mining exceeds 35 ft (11 m) at Boling and Orchard Domes. Aerial photography from 1941 to 1979 documents continuous enlargement of one subsidence feature at Orchard Dome at the lateral rate of approximately 3 acres/year (12,000 m2).

Cretaceous rocks in the Southern High Plains, traditionally considered to be part of the High Plains aquifer and recharged by the overlying Ogallala aquifer, actually contain three aquifers with different recharge sources. Two separate subcrop areas of Cretaceous rocks underlie the Ogallala Formation. These subcrops are composed of sandstones, limestones, and shales and have a total thickness of as much as 250 ft (76 m). Three aquifers, the Trinity sandstone, the Edwards limestone, and the Duck Creek – Kiamichi sandstones and limestones, were identified within the Cretaceous section.