Lake Corpus Christi falls below 10%, city unveils water security plans<\/a><\/p>\nFor Hilda, Lake Corpus Christi means everything, but she says it\u2019s not the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in shock because I\u2019ve never seen it like this. This is by far the worst,\u201d Hilda said. \u201cIt would be very nice to see it like that again. You know, my parents would bring us here all the time, and it\u2019s just very sentimental. Very sad that we have to see it like this, and we don\u2019t want to see it gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
At its lowest level, Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said it\u2019s not time to panic, just time to keep preparing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t trigger any emergency. It doesn\u2019t trigger any stage in water use. What it does do is remind us that the 76 million gallons of additional water that we\u2019re bringing on through a billion dollars of approved City Council projects \u2014 that\u2019s what\u2019s going to get us through the fact that this lake is dropping,\u201d Zanoni said.<\/p>\n
Zanoni said the City Council has approved four groundwater projects in Nueces and San Patricio counties. The city is also collaborating with neighboring communities to secure water for everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we have a best-case scenario. We\u2019re developing a midline case and a worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario, which assumes some level of rain, has this lake lasting through about early fall before it\u2019s essentially down to 1% or completely empty,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cWhile it may look shallow, there\u2019s still a large volume of water. We\u2019re using less each day because we\u2019re drawing more from our eastern sources, so there\u2019s lower use of this reservoir and Choke Canyon ahead of it. If we continue using it at the current pace, early fall is when it would be depleted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi Water Chief Operating Officer Nick Winkleman said the lake isn\u2019t the city\u2019s only water source.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe important note is the city did a great job of diversifying its surface water supply with the addition of Lake Texana and the lower Colorado River through the Mary Rhodes pipeline,\u201d Winkleman said. \u201cSince March of last year, we\u2019ve been pumping approximately 70 to 72 million gallons a day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi Fire Department Chief Brandon Wade said there are no changes to the emergency plan. The department meets weekly to review drought conditions and lake levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work with the Corpus Christi Water Department to monitor the system, the levels, and supply and demand,\u201d Wade said. \u201cIf there were to be any challenges, that\u2019s when we would enact those plans and put them in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
With summer near, Hilda hopes water levels don\u2019t drop further.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pray that everything goes well,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, we hear a lot of bad things, like hurricanes. I really don\u2019t want a hurricane, but if that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take for it to fill back up, then that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lake Corpus Christi’s water capacity drops below 10%, its lowest level on record. CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Lake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-193549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193549","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=193549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}