Three weeks after officials in Three Rivers announced that the rural Coastal Bend community was perilously close to losing its access to water due to the actions of its neighbors downstream in Corpus Christi, the mayor has now issued a disaster declaration over the worsening water crisis.
“The Mayor of the City of Three Rivers has issued this Drought Disaster Declaration in response to existing drought conditions,” city officials said in a Facebook post late Friday.
“This action is intended to ensure the City has the flexibility to marshal resources… to respond to (the) drought conditions. It also positions the City to pursue and access additional funding for emergency measures related to the drought response,” the post reads.
The declaration states that demand for water is far exceeding resources available in the Coastal Bend, which is in the middle of a historic, five-year-long drought that has depleted the region’s reservoirs. That includes Choke Canyon Reservoir, the manmade lake that supplies Three Rivers with nearly all of its fresh water.
Last month, Three Rivers officials went public with allegations that gross mismanagement and “inaccurate water projections” by the city of Corpus Christi had left the smaller town at the brink of losing access to Choke Canyon as its levels continue to plummet. As of Friday, the lake was just 7.5% full, according to Water Data for Texas.
Additionally, in recent weeks, Corpus Christi has begun to accelerate its efforts to extract water from the Evangeline Aquifer. It’s part of the city’s larger efforts to stave off an impending water crisis so severe that it’s prompted a response from Gov. Greg Abbott, who recently waived a host of environmental permitting requirements in order to allow Corpus Christi to fast-track its groundwater well projects. Corpus Christi capitalized on that intervention and almost immediately began drawing as much water from the aquifer as it could while rushing to dig dozens more wells.
But those actions set off a firestorm in cities across the Coastal Bend — particularly the inland cities that rely upon the Evangeline Aquifer as their sole source of water. Three Rivers’ disaster declaration makes note of how those actions are stressing already precarious resources and leading to “critically low water supply levels.”
“Regional water demand is exceeding available supply from existing sources, including surface water and groundwater systems,” the disaster declaration reads.
The disaster declaration echoes the urgency of Abbott’s March 18 proclamation of the “imminent threat” that the ongoing drought poses to the Coastal Bend. And it similarly empowers the city to waive or suspend certain regulations in order to address the crisis. It also gives the tiny town a way to tap into emergency funding for infrastructure and disaster relief funding and to levy any other available resources “that are reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster.”
The disaster declaration echoes Abbott’s March 18 warning that the ongoing drought poses an “imminent threat” to the Coastal Bend. It lets the city loosen certain rules so it can respond more quickly. It also gives the small town access to emergency funding for infrastructure and disaster relief, along with the ability to use whatever resources it reasonably needs to handle the situation.
“The City of Three Rivers, Texas, is taking extraordinary measures to prevent the threats of this devastating drought to our community,” the declaration reads.
The emergency disaster declaration will be in effect for the next seven days but can be extended by a vote of the Three Rivers City Council.