Regional leaders huddle at the Wesley Seale Dam to figure out how to stay supplied.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — South Texas’ drought is now bone-dry serious. Lake levels at both Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon have sunk below 12 percent capacity, and that’s bad news for towns that depend on them for drinking water.

RELATED: Corpus Christi Water hosting hiring event Saturday

City managers from Beeville, Mathis, Alice, and Corpus Christi gathered Monday at the Wesley Seale Dam to confront the crisis and talk survival strategies before the taps run dry.

“Part of today’s goal was to see how serious the situation is and then what options we have to help them out,” said Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni. “Pipelines could be something, improving their intake structure at the lake.”

Corpus Christi has a safety net it can draw up to 70 million gallons a day from the Colorado River through the Mary Rhodes Pipeline. Smaller communities don’t have that luxury. They rely solely on water from the shrinking lakes.

“It’s just time for the smaller communities to diversify their water portfolio,” said Mathis City Manager Cedric Davis. “We definitely want to be in there, and we want to thank you guys because you’ve been good partners.”

Mathis is drilling new wells to reduce its dependence on the lake. Beeville is working to rehab old wells.

“If we do the rehab of the existing wells and then the conveyance system and the RO skids, we potentially could have water coming in by February of next year,” said Daniel Dorgan, Beeville’s interim city manager.

Alice is taking a similar approach, blending lake water with groundwater through its own reverse osmosis system. A long-term plan to weather droughts like this one.

“We are blending with our surface water and we’re planning ahead as well,” said Alice City Manager Michael Esparza. “So, we have an intake right where we’re blending in case we want to drill a freshwater well as well.”

After the meeting, the group toured the Wesley Seale Dam to review recent upgrades designed to strengthen it and prepare for the next big rain. Whenever that finally comes.

For now, that rain can’t come soon enough.