Corpus Christi is expected to further ease water restrictions later this week. The change comes as the Coastal Bend’s two largest reservoirs continue to hold above 40% combined capacity for longer than initially projected.
Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni made the announcement during Tuesday’s Corpus Christi City Council meeting.
“This information is going to help us make a declaration on Thursday that we would be able to go into Stage 1 water restrictions. Right now, we’re at Stage 2,” Zanoni told the council.
“This is unexpected happiness,” Mayor Pro-tem Kaylynn Paxson said.
However, the city manager added that there’s still work to do before he makes the declaration official, just before city leaders gather for a fiscal budget workshop on Thursday morning. Part of that work includes talking “to some of our wholesale customers,” Zanoni said.
It was precisely three weeks ago to the day that Zanoni officially ended the stringent Stage 3 water restrictions that had been imposed upon much of the Coastal Bend for 596 days — since December 2024. Under the city’s drought contingency plan, the city manager is responsible for deciding, based on reservoir levels and other water-usage factors, which water restriction level to impose.
At the time, Zanoni said he didn’t expect to further ease the water conservation measures because projections showed that the two reservoirs would only stay above 40% capacity “for about two weeks.” Further changes to the restrictions could cause public confusion, Zanoni said during an August 4 news conference. But now, officials with Corpus Christi Water (CCW) — the public utility that serves the city, as well as communities across seven Coastal Bend counties — project the two reservoirs to hold above 40% for several more weeks.
“By the end of September of this year, we will likely be back below 40%,” CCW Chief Operating Officer Nick Winkelmann said.
Once Zanoni makes the Stage 1 declaration official, Corpus Christi will likely remain under the less stringent water restrictions into the spring, when the two reservoirs are again expected to fall below 30% combined capacity.
The movement to Stage 1 water restrictions — if the assumptions hold — then we would be falling back into Stage 2 at the end of April or early May 2027,” Winkelmann said.
But Winkelmann emphasized the continued importance of Corpus Christi’s efforts to diversify its water supply. Over the last year, the city has been pursuing accelerated efforts to dig dozens of groundwater wells to tap into the Evangeline Aquifer. At the same time, however, progress on a billion-dollar seawater desalination plant has stalled as the council remains gridlocked on voting it forward.
“Now is not the time to stop diversifying our water supply efforts. Now is the time to continue to proceed with the groundwork that we have prepared and the groundwork that this council has approved,” Winkelmann said.