{"id":125342,"date":"2026-01-16T04:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T04:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/125342\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T04:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T04:46:15","slug":"water-crisis-looms-for-this-texas-coastal-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/125342\/","title":{"rendered":"Water crisis looms for this Texas coastal city"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coastal Bend<\/a> is expected to reach a critical turning point in the region’s water scarcity crisis by November, and its largest reservoirs could run dry by May 2027.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, January 13, the city of Corpus Christi announced<\/a> that water levels at its western water supply – which consists of Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir – had plummeted to a combined capacity of just 10%. At the same time, water officials announced that levels in the region’s eastern water supply – Lake\u00a0Texana and the Lower Colorado River – are also falling fast. <\/p>\n

At the current rate of water consumption, and as a years-long ongoing drought persists, the eastern supplies are projected to fall below 50% by April 3, putting residents in Corpus Christi<\/a> and surrounding Coastal Bend communities at risk of mandatory water usage restrictions – known as “curtailment” – as soon as November, Nicholas\u00a0J. Winkelmann, interim chief operating officer of Corpus Christi Water, explained to the Corpus Christi City Council during a lengthy meeting Tuesday<\/a>. Further, Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon are on track to run dry by May 2027.<\/p>\n

“The clock is ticking,”\u00a0Winkelmann said.<\/p>\n

Without a major rain event between now and November, approximately half a million people living across seven counties will be impacted by the water shortages,\u00a0Winkelmann said. If Lake Texana and the Colorado River do fall below 50% in April, then the eastern water supply will be on course to reach a critical milestone in November – a Level 1 water emergency.<\/p>\n

“That is the date that we are 180 days, or six months, away from not having enough supply to meet our demand,”\u00a0Winkelmann said.<\/p>\n

The career public engineer went on to explain that while the Coastal Bend is in the midst of a 4 1\/2-year-long drought, even Corpus Christi Water’s most conservative estimates did not properly account for how quickly the region’s combined water supplies are dwindling. Last year, the water authority created what it calls a “dashboard”<\/a> to track how much water is available, as well as forecast projections of future water availability.<\/p>\n

“We thought that the dashboard in 2025 was extremely conservative, but actually, in 2025, we got less\u00a0streamflow into those western reservoirs than the dashboard predicted,” Winkelmann said, referring to the amount of water entering into the water supply.<\/p>\n

That’s left officials scrambling to diversify where the Coastal Bend gets its water. With a capacity of nearly 663,000 acre-feet, Choke Canyon is the region’s single largest source of water<\/a>. But as its levels declined, officials have been counting on Lake\u00a0Texana and the Colorado River to supply as much as 70% of the Coastal Bend’s demand for water. But Lake Texana has less than one-fourth the capacity of Choke Canyon. As of Monday, Choke Canyon’s capacity had fallen to 9.4%, while Lake Corpus Christi had fallen to 11.6% of its total 256,000 acre-foot capacity, according to a Corpus Christi Water news release. And as the Coastal Bend has increased its reliance on Lake Texana, data show that its levels are down 10% compared to this time last year.<\/p>\n

“All of that is extremely concerning,”\u00a0Winkelmann said.<\/p>\n

This article originally published at Water crisis looms for this Texas coastal city<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Coastal Bend is expected to reach a critical turning point in the region’s water scarcity crisis by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[52753,7256,155,157,156,9871,53141,35723,2646,54182],"class_list":{"0":"post-125342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-choke-canyon","9":"tag-coastal-bend","10":"tag-corpus-christi","11":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","12":"tag-corpus-christi-news","13":"tag-lake-corpus-christi","14":"tag-lake-texana","15":"tag-water-levels","16":"tag-water-supply","17":"tag-winkelmann"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}