Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
City officials in Corpus Christi on Tuesday released modeling that showed emergency cuts to water demand could be required as soon as May as reservoir levels continue to decline.
That means the region’s complex of refineries and chemical plants could face disruptions of their water supply sooner than previously predicted.
At a regularly scheduled City Council meeting at City Hall, Nick Winkelmann, Corpus Christi Water’s chief operating officer, presented five scenarios depicting varying success rates for the city’s emergency water projects. They showed a “Level 1 Water Emergency” beginning in May, in October or not at all.
Previous city modeling had forecast the emergency, which requires a 25 percent reduction in all water use, in November, equivalent to about 30 million gallons per day (MGD) of water. Officials did not offer any clarity on how water curtailment might be implemented in the region.
“We are this close to a potential curtailment and we have not all sat down as a team to look at it. That’s a problem,” Council Member Kaylynn Paxson told the meeting.
Instead, the council on Tuesday approved hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for a last-ditch emergency groundwater import project from the Evangeline Aquifer that still doesn’t have permits.
“It’s the only thing right now that will keep us out of a Level 1 Water Emergency,” Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni told the council. “We’re taking a calculated risk and continuing the design and we’re going to start building the project in about five weeks without the drilling permits.”
In a best-case scenario, the project will start producing 4 MGD in November, Zanoni said. In the worst case, the city could invest in building the project, only for its permits to be litigated in state administrative court for two more years.
“I think we have to plan for the worst-case scenario,” said Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo. “We pray to God that this comes through, but if it doesn’t, we’ve got to be able to know what’s going to come.”
The council also approved plans to schedule a March 31 workshop to discuss what a Level 1 Water Emergency would entail.
“If we get to the point where we have to declare a Level 1 Water Emergency, we need to be ready for that and we have no precedent to follow. There’s no manual, there’s no video,” Zanoni told the council. “There’s a monumental task ahead of us to develop this.”
He said his team of 30 people had recently started working on Saturdays to address this problem.
Abbott Gives Emergency Orders
In prior days, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued several emergency directives in a bid to prolong Corpus Christi’s timeline to water shortages. On Monday, Abbott directed the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority to change its drought policy and delay cuts to Corpus Christi’s water supply.
“Governor Abbott will utilize all necessary tools to ensure the Corpus Christi area has a safe, reliable water supply,” Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The city is currently drawing most of its water from Lake Texana, 100 miles to its northeast, where rules by the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority stipulate a 10 percent reduction in Corpus Christi’s draw when the lake falls below 50 percent full, which authorities expect to happen in April.
On Monday Abbott “directed the LNRA to ensure Corpus Christi water is not curtailed in the near term,” Mahaleris said in his statement on Tuesday.
Abbott directed the agency to move its curtailment threshold to the point at which Lake Texana reaches 40 percent “to further protect residents as the city forms long-term solutions,” Mahaleris said. Instead of cutting Corpus Christi’s water 10 percent when Texana hits 50 percent, the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority would cut the city’s water by 20 percent when Texana hits 40 percent, general manager Patrick Brzozowski told Inside Climate News in an interview at the agency office on Monday.
Abbott’s order would in effect delay implementation of water curtailment, but result in twice as much water loss if the reservoir recedes to 40 percent capacity. That would buy Corpus Christi another month to bring new water supplies online before much larger forced cuts of water demand would take effect.
“The Governor is further stepping in and has waived regulations to ensure TCEQ can issue temporary permits on an expedited basis,” Mahaleris said, referring to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Such permits would allow the city to convey water down the Nueces River from new well fields it is now planning to develop.
On Friday, Abbott’s office also ordered the suspension of some permitting requirements for Corpus Christi to send well water down the Nueces River.
“Disaster is on the doorstep of the City of Corpus Christi,” Abbott’s chief of staff, Robert Black, wrote in an email to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, five days after Inside Climate News reported the impending catastrophe. “But the normal permitting process takes several months, and Corpus Christi’s demand for water will soon exceed available supplies.”
The city’s two reservoirs on the Nueces River, Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi, “may be depleted as soon as May 2026,” Black wrote in the email, which was provided by Abbott’s press office. The city’s online water dashboard previously indicated its reservoirs could dry by March 2027.
Black’s letter said the Texas Government Code “authorizes Governor Abbott to suspend or supersede” any rule that “that would prevent, hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with a disaster.”
Abbott ordered the suspension of requirements for a “bed and bank” permit that regulates the quality and quantity of water Corpus Christi could pump from its emergency water wellfields into the Nueces River.
“The Governor is stepping forward to help the citizens and businesses of Corpus Christi avoid disaster,” Nueces County Commissioner Mike Pusley said in a statement to Inside Climate News. “But the rural communities that depend on water wells for their livelihoods will suffer as a result.”
Many of Pusley’s constituents from the incorporated county near the city’s well fields attended the City Council meeting on Tuesday to decry plummeting levels in their personal wells as a result of the city’s recent pumping.
A spokesperson for the city of Corpus Christi, Elisa Olsen, expressed “sincere gratitude to Gov. Greg Abbott and our local legislative delegation for this decisive action” which “reflects a vital recognition of the record drought and its impact on the Coastal Bend.”
“The City is prepared to follow through immediately on this authority to further secure our community’s water future,” Zanoni, the city manager, said in a statement.
Last week, Abbott, responding to questions from a KXAN journalist about reporting by Inside Climate News, threatened to take over Corpus Christi if the city didn’t take steps to avert a water crisis.
“We can only give them a little time more before the state of Texas has to take over and micromanage that city,” Abbott told TV cameras.
A Decade of Missteps
More than a decade of water planning missteps has led Corpus Christi to the precipice of an unprecedented economic disaster. The city and its port have tried and failed for years to build seawater desalination plants while drought deepened and reservoir levels fell.
“We’ve been in panic mode since the day we were sworn in,” Council Member Mark Scott, a title company owner who assumed his position in January 2025, told the meeting.
Most of the region’s water supply goes to industrial users, including chemical plants and refineries that produce jet fuel for Texas airports as well as gasoline for the state. The region’s largest water consumer is a plastics plant operated by ExxonMobil and the Saudi state oil company, which opened in 2022.
Now Corpus Christi is racing to develop the emergency water wellfields before its supplies run short. Those clusters of wells, which the city started in 2025, will pump groundwater into the Nueces River to boost water levels in Lake Corpus Christi.
At current production levels of 4 MGD, those wells won’t prevent the city from entering a water emergency in May, according to city modeling presented Tuesday.
If those wells produce 10 MGD by April, it still might not prevent the city from entering a water emergency in May. If the wells boost production and secure additional permitting by April, it could push the emergency to October.
If, in addition to those conditions, the city receives permits for its Evangeline groundwater import project and it starts producing 4 MGD in November, the city could avoid an emergency altogether.
The city also reported progress on its seawater desalination project and wastewater reuse project. It said containerized brackish water treatment plants could produce 4 MGD in 11 months or 21 MGD in two years. It did not present detailed plans for what to do in the case of an emergency.
The city should be making plans to reduce its current water use, including by industrial water users, according to Todd Votteler, a veteran South Texas water manager and editor in chief of the Texas Water Journal.
“Restricting current use is really the best short-term option,” Votteler, a former executive manager for the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, told Inside Climate News. “While the ongoing debate over seawater desalination and other prospective water supplies is important, it is ultimately not relevant to addressing the current water crisis.”
The post Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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