The literature suggests that a subtle relationship exists for communities between the meaning of water and sense of place, making fertile ground for systematic investigation. The relationship has obvious importance in today’s world, where people’s reliance on water, and the need for reliable supplies, form part of a common discourse in natural resource management. Yet, there has been much less discussion of what water means to people, how it connects with peoples’ sense of place, and what that might mean for the way people interact with their surroundings. The methodology of constructivist grounded theory was therefore appropriate to investigate this issue, and to derive a conceptual framework from the perspectives, the feelings, the experiences, and the actions of local insiders to water and to a place in which they lived. A systematic application of this methodology allowed me to constantly interact with data, create descriptions, and build conceptual frameworks from the ground.