Houston official takes lessons learned in Corpus Christi

HOUSTON — All eyes are on the South Texas city of Corpus Christi as it works to figure out what’s next for its water supply.

After years as the chief operating officer in Corpus Christi, Drew Molly is now the City of Houston’s very first chief water officer.

“This is really unprecedented, which is frankly why there’s a lot of attention on the situation,” said Molly.

The situation Molly is talking about is what’s going on in Corpus Christi. The city is experiencing a severe shortage of water — a shortage that Drew saw coming.

“I was really tasked with trying to bring in a new water supply for the City of Corpus Christi,” said Molly.

He was the chief operating officer of Corpus Christi from 2022 through September 2025.

“We’ve been talking about desalination in Texas for many years. Desalination is a project that had been on the books in Corpus Christi for 10 years. My role when I came into the City of Corpus Christi was to essentially continue to move the momentum forward of developing a big desalination project,” said Molly.

He said city officials there couldn’t quite come to a decision, leaving them in the spot they are now.

“They hit a pause. They hit a pause on the project, and it’s unfortunate because we all know that Corpus Christi is struggling right now with sustainable water supplies,” said Molly.

It’s a sense of urgency that Molly says is the most important takeaway from his former job, and one he hopes to create in his new role. He’s now taken on the responsibility of supplying water to the nation’s fourth largest city.

“Houston, like many other cities in the country, has aging infrastructure, so there is a very large sense of urgency that we have on our team to continue to invest in that infrastructure and ensure that the infrastructure is being replaced as quickly as we can replace it,” said Molly.

Just this week, the environmental organization The Sierra Club released a new study that shows Texas is at a crucial point for deciding about its water use. They called on Texas leaders and owners of power plants to do more to conserve water. They said the use of water by those plants is “staggering.” The group also says the situation in Corpus Christi is a wake-up call.

“It has made us acutely aware that water scarcity in the state is not taken seriously enough,” said Linsay Mader.

Molly said that’s why resources are being put into cities like Houston.

“Houston has a $4 billion water treatment plant expansion project. It may be one of the largest water treatment plant expansion projects going on in the world today,” said Molly.

Molly said he would continue to put the community first and make sure nothing like what’s happening in South Texas happens in Houston.