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No modern American city has ever run out of water. But chances are rising that Corpus Christi could be the first. Absent a biblical rainfall event, its reservoirs are on track to completely dry up by next year.
That raises baffling questions for the future of Texas’ eighth-largest city and one of the nation’s major petrochemical hubs.
“We have no precedent to follow. There’s no manual, there’s no video,” Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni told the City Council in March, when local leaders first acknowledged that disaster could be imminent.
This week, Zanoni announced that Corpus Christi will require 25% cuts to water usage across the board in September. But at a City Council meeting on Tuesday, officials appeared deeply uncomfortable with exploring the details of how life in Corpus Christi might look under these conditions — and whether such ambitious conservation targets were even possible.
The city of Corpus Christi doesn’t just provide water to 500,000 residents of the city and nearby towns. The rest of its water consumption — more than half of it, in fact — comes from the multi-billion dollar chemical plants, refineries and other industrial facilities operated by some of the biggest companies in the world. And those companies — including ExxonMobil, Valero and Occidental — have not publicly explained how, or if, they will implement such steep water cuts this fall.
So what does all this mean for Corpus Christi residents and beyond?
Read more from Dylan Baddour of @insideclimatenews and Neena Satija and Emily Salazar from The Texas Newsroom and @yourkedt via the link in our bio or at texasstandard.org.
