u/StandingCypress

Expectations of a powerful "super El Niño" event this year suggest that intensely wet weather could return to the Coastal Bend of Texas this fall. The record-breaking Texas drought of 2011-2014 ended with the onset of El Niño. Then 2015 became Texas’ wettest year on record. On Memorial Day weekend in 2015, catastrophic flooding tore through the Texas Hill Country and the town of Wimberley. 

Successive years saw disastrous flooding across Texas, including in Houston in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

“Every one of those years we had devastating flooding,” said Greg Waller, an operational hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth. However, he cautioned, “no two events are exactly alike,” and past weather patterns offer no guarantees for the future. 

And that period did not refill Corpus Christi’s reservoirs entirely. Choke Canyon hasn’t been full since 2008. Not even super El Niño is guaranteed to solve Corpus Christi’s water problem. 

“I think it will help,” said Pat Fitzpatrick, atmospheric sciences program coordinator at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. “I don’t know if we will get out of the drought that easily.”

Lake Texana, the smallest of Corpus Christi’s three reservoirs, rebounded from record lows last month when it received its first inflows in eight months. Worst-case projections in mid-April showed the lake going dry by summer. Now it should last until early next year, at least. 

It’s one small step in a regional water crisis that has developed over decades. But the short bridge that recent rains provided goes a long way to helping the region narrowly avoid a disaster, local water planners say. Expectations of a powerful “super El Niño” event this year suggest that intensely wet weather could return to the Coastal Bend of Texas this fall, potentially putting water into the region’s largest reservoirs, which have fallen to critical levels. 

Earlier this year, water planners in Corpus Christi worried their reservoirs could empty before El Niño appeared to save them. The recent boost to Lake Texana significantly lowers that likelihood, according to John Michael, an engineering firm executive who has spent 44 years working on water infrastructure in the region.  

“We’ve just got to get through this year,” said Michael, local vice president of Hanson Professional Services, an engineering firm with offices around the country. “I’m much more optimistic today than I was three months ago.”

If levels continue to rise in Lake Texana, 100 miles northeast of Corpus Christi and linked to the city by pipeline, it could meet the region’s domestic and industrial water needs well into next year. By that time, planners hope El Niño will end five consecutive years of record-breaking heat and drought.

Dry spells in Texas have been known to conclude with deluges, said Matt Lanza, a longtime Houston meteorologist and co-founder of the website Space City Weather.  

“We’ve had some false starts the last couple years,” he said. “We are hopefully beginning to see the end of the drought in South Texas, but only time can tell.”

Narrowly avoiding a water disaster doesn’t mean that Corpus Christi has solved its water crisis. The region’s largest source of water, the Choke Canyon Reservoir, has received three minor inflow events and zero major inflow in the last 15 years, according to Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. The next-largest reservoir, Lake Corpus Christi, hasn’t logged inflows in five years. 

Both reservoirs combined are about 8 percent full, as the region’s industrial complexes continue to draw large volumes of water daily. A return of moderate rainfall could keep Corpus Christi from emptying its main reservoirs, but it wouldn’t likely fill them up anytime soon.

“We are in drought, but we also have the water shortage,” said Juan Peña, lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Corpus Christi. “Drought is … short-term. The water shortage is more long-term.”

It’s rare to find specific figures for the volumes of water these things plan to consume for evaporative cooling. In this case it looks like it came out because someone broke their NDA.

Corpus Christi needs the groundwater beneath the small town of Sinton so urgently that it’s already laying pipeline, even before it has the permits to start drilling for water.

Sinton, with 5,500 residents about half an hour north, is fighting those permits in court, citing concerns for its own water supply. But leaders in Corpus Christi, which supplies water to half a million people, now suggest an ulterior motive: Sinton wants a thirsty, new complex of data centers.

Officials and executives in Corpus Christi point to recent land deals, well permits and a rezoning ordinance as evidence for the data center plans. Officials in Sinton neither confirm nor deny Corpus Christi’s supposition.

“It is rumors,” said John Hobson, Sinton’s city manager, declining to say whether or not it is true.

Everyone involved in the deal probably signed non-disclosure agreements, said Greg Ellis, an attorney for the San Patricio Groundwater Conservation District, which is based in Sinton and issued the drilling permits in dispute.

“Seems like it’s gotten out anyway,” he said. “I find the rumor very believable.”

The mayor of Corpus Christi called an emergency meeting last month to deliver a dire warning: The city, among the largest in Texas, was running out of water. City leaders had to make a plan, and fast.

“Every day of delay increases uncertainty,” the mayor, Paulette Guajardo, told the City Council. Officials had warned that demand for water could outstrip supply within months.

Corpus Christi, a coastal city of more than 300,000 and home to a large industrial port, is not alone in grappling with water shortages. Half the nation is dealing with a persistent drought, according to federal data, at the same time as industrial water demand has risen because of growing needs from power plants and data centers.

But Corpus Christi’s struggle to respond could serve as a warning to cities around Texas and across the country, officials said.

“This is actually the canary in the coal mine,” said Charles Perry, a Republican who chairs a committee on water in the Texas Senate.

Faced with a looming water crisis, Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened a state takeover, saying he may be forced to “run that city.” President Trump, during a visit last month, promised the city federal support for water projects.

Corpus Christi’s water problem has been building for several years. Its port and industrial corridor have expanded with the encouragement of the state and local government. New water sources have not kept pace. Then came a major, ongoing drought, now in its fifth year.

Major industrial companies, which use half the city’s water each day, have recently taken some steps to reduce consumption, like using more internally recycled water and cutting back on fleet vehicle washes, industry representatives said. But city officials said the companies have not made drastic cuts.

Bob Paulison, executive director of the Coastal Bend Industry Association, which represents companies with local footprints like Citgo and Valero Energy, said simply shutting down industry is not a viable option.

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars of investment at stake,” he said in an interview, “and the future of an entire region.”

Failure to address the crisis would ripple far beyond Corpus Christi. The city supplies water to about half a million customers in seven counties and the industrial companies that produce products like jet fuel, plastics and steel.

But the City Council, which is tasked with fixing the problem, has been wracked by infighting and high turnover. There is an effort to remove the mayor from office, and even mundane policy discussions devolve into sniping. At the emergency meeting last month, some council members questioned the mayor’s focus on a desalination project that, they said, would not solve the city’s immediate water problems.

“It’s clearly dysfunctional,” Peter Zanoni, the city manager, said in an interview.

Without a quick solution, there has been an all-out scramble for water in recent months. Residents have been asked to conserve as the city drills new wells. Even the school district is looking at drilling. All of the projects could cost around $1 billion, which would increase the city’s debt by 50 percent. Officials have also discussed building multiple desalination plants similar to those used in the Middle East to turn seawater in drinkable water.