Cutting a New Driveway in Rural Galveston County Means a Culvert Permit

On a county-maintained road out past the city limits, that roadside ditch isn't decoration — it's drainage, and a driveway has to cross it without choking the water flow. So before you pour gravel, you call the Road and Bridge Department at (281) 534-4152 to start a culvert permit. Only the property owner of the lot next to the ditch can request it, and Road and Bridge does the actual install. They won't touch a TxDOT right-of-way or a private road, so the first question is always whose road it is.

You buy the pipe; they set it. The county only accepts reinforced concrete or double-walled HDPE, no thinner stuff, with a 12-inch minimum inside diameter and at least 20 feet of length. Installation runs $19.82 a foot, but the first driveway onto a property gets a flat $258 for that initial 20-foot run, so a basic single access is the cheap case and a wide circular drive is not.

The crew works out of 5115 Highway 3 in Dickinson. Skipping the permit and dropping your own pipe is how you end up with a ditch that ponds, a flooded neighbor, and an order to dig it back out.