You may live in one: a housing development with its own, man-made lakes. They add beauty and sometimes a place to fish and swim.

But what if your lake leaks? It’s happening in one development north of Houston.

It would mean driving an hour from downtown, but moving north of The Woodlands was something Wanda Stevens thought would be worth it.

“I commute over 50 miles because I said, ‘if I can come out here and enjoy the lake, why wait till I retire let’s go ahead and do it now,’” Stevens said.

And she wasn’t the only one who fell in love with the woods and especially the little lakes dotting Montgomery County’s rolling terrain.

Bob Young moved here from Reno.

“We moved 2,500 miles here to live on a lake,” he said.

To live on a lake, like what these homebuyers said they saw on a video about a development called Crown Oaks.

“I was expecting to have a lake in my backyard,” Young said. “I have dirt in my backyard. … “There is no lake, there are no fish.”

“There’s no water at the park, either,” Stevens said.

The lake never filled up.

But that’s only the half of it.

“I’ve gotten to the point I’m very skeptical the lake will ever fill,” Joe Webber said.

Turns out, developers started construction of the dam to the hold water to make the lake without the required government permits, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The commission regulates man-made lakes and runs the state’s dam safety program.

It did not even know about the dam until after homeowners started complaining.

When state inspectors did finally learn of the dam, they didn’t mince words about the seriousness of what they found. They said if the lake ever did fill up, the result could be a threat to people and property.

The state rates the dam as having a “high downstream hazard” because should it fail, these homes located downstream on another lake could be flooded.

In a 2006 letter, state inspectors said they found evidence of water seeping, or leaking, from the dam area.

They also were concerned about what would happen if water spilled over the dam in a big storm, quote: “During a flood event that would engage the emergency spillway, there would be a considerable amount of flow with potentially high velocities. Any failure of the rock protection could result in substantial damage to the dam.”

The state ordered the developer to make changes.

His lawyer said: “The developer is standing by his word and doing his best to fix the problems as advised by engineers. The original engineer let him down by not getting permits and doing the proper design.”

As for the homeowners who said they expected a lake: “We disagree there were promises made. We don’t think we misled these people.”

And in fact, the Crown Oaks development does have another lake on the property, and it’s filled with water.

But it too was built with no permit, and the state has ordered improvements to its dam.

“They think maybe like I thought: You just go dig a hole, and it’ll fill with water and you’ll have a lake,” Stevens said.

But it’s not that simple, at least not here, where docks, a beach and a fishing pier await the arrival of a lake.

A lawyer for some of the homeowners who’ve sued the developer say fixing the lake will require a lot of work and possibly millions of dollars.