Travis County, TX Fence Regulations: Retaining Walls (2026)

Travis County Code Sec. 943(a) governs cut-and-fill land balancing on any site that requires a development permit or engineered construction plans. Subsection (a)(1) caps ordinary cut-and-fill grading at a maximum of eight vertical feet, whether that is excavated cut, placed fill, or a combination of the two. Subsection (a)(3) then singles out retaining structures: a retaining wall over five feet in height must be detailed in the construction plans, and those plans must be sealed by a Texas-licensed professional engineer and submitted with the development permit application, specifically for a non-residential site development, a multi-family dwelling, or a subdivision.

Cut and fill on a slope steeper than 15 percent is separately prohibited under (a)(4) unless the design includes erosion controls such as terracing, soil retention blankets, or mixed vegetation, and no cut or fill may sit within 100 feet of the centerline of a waterway draining 64 or more acres under (a)(5). Every proposal must also comply with the no-net-loss-of-floodplain-storage requirement of Chapter 464 under (a)(6). Subsection (b) allows the County Executive to approve an exception to the eight-foot cut-and-fill cap where the applicant demonstrates the standard height is not feasible for the site, provided the request includes substantial permanent stabilization measures, and the cap does not apply at all to permanent water quality controls, detention ponds, streets, building footprints, or driveways. All of this must be submitted alongside the SWP3 requirements of Sec. 935(c)(5) and the general submittal requirements of Sec. 931.