As the Coastal Bend continues to grapple with an impending water crisis, officials in Corpus Christi are seeing glimmers of hope that new water will soon be on the way as part of the so-called Evangeline groundwater project.
On Friday, March 27, a critical shipment of piping arrived in rural San Patricio County that will soon connect a new network of groundwater wells to Corpus Christi Water, which provides water to 500,000 customers across seven counties.
“Today at the ranch will be the first delivery of piping that will be used to connect the well field — all the different pumps, all the different wells at the well field,” Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said during a weekly press briefing on the city’s water woes.
“This project will take about 30 miles of pipe to connect all the wells, and then connect it to a holding tank, and ultimately to the Mary Rhodes Pipeline,” Zanoni added.
Some 600 feet of the 48-inch high-density polyethylene (HDPE) piping arrived Friday at Li Ranch, a 22,000-acre ranch in San Patricio County. There, Corpus Christi has fast-tracked hundreds of millions of dollars on a project to tap into the brackish Evangeline Aquifer, which is part of the larger Gulf Coast Aquifer. The city plans to dig two dozen wells into the aquifer and then connect that water into the Mary Rhodes Pipeline, which transports water from Lake Texana 101 miles southwest to the Coastal Bend’s largest city. The critical piping is being custom-made specifically for the Evangeline project by a South Carolina manufacturer, the city manager said. Zanoni expects “90%” of the HDPE piping to be delivered to the ranch and installed by July, though he did not provide an estimate for when the water will be available.
“This is a big milestone,” Zanoni said.
Corpus Christi has already invested $38 million to purchase the groundwater rights at the ranch. In February, Corpus Christi City Council approved more than $400 million in emergency expenditures for a number of water infrastructure projects meant to stave off a potential “day zero” scenario where the Coastal Bend’s water supply is insufficient to meet demand. That includes some $182.4 million that is earmarked for a Kansas City, Missouri-based firm called Garney Companies Inc. to build the Evangeline Wellfield.