{"id":219952,"date":"2026-03-25T16:19:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/219952\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T16:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:19:14","slug":"corpus-christi-fires-back-in-water-crisis-blame-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/219952\/","title":{"rendered":"Corpus Christi fires back in water crisis blame game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corpus Christi has responded to inflammatory allegations from officials in Three Rivers, who blame the Coastal Bend\u2019s largest city for a hastening of its water crisis that could leave Three Rivers without access to water<\/a> a year earlier than anticipated.<\/p>\n

On Monday, March 23, the city of Three Rivers issued a public notice<\/a> announcing that it would \u201csoon\u201d be unable to draw water from Choke Canyon Reservoir, which serves as the primary fresh water source for the tiny town of about 1,800 people.<\/p>\n

Three Rivers directly attributed the impending water crisis \u2014 which comes as the entire Coastal Bend grapples with worsening water scarcity fueled by years of drought \u2014 on alleged incompetence by Corpus Christi. Three Rivers claims that as recently as January, Corpus Christi made \u201cinaccurate\u201d projections about the water supply that wrongly led them to believe they would have continued access to Choke Canyon water through next spring.<\/p>\n

Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon are the two largest sources of water in the Coastal Bend<\/a>, and once supplied nearly three-fourths of Corpus Christi\u2019s water. Meanwhile, Three Rivers, which lies about 70 miles away, is almost entirely dependent on Choke Canyon for its water. As of Monday, the two lakes were at a combined storage of 8.3%. And therein lies the problem. Three Rivers claims Corpus Christi will soon release water from Choke Canyon into Lake Corpus Christi, which will leave Three Rivers\u2019 pumps unable to draw water from the rapidly dwindling reservoir. Three Rivers officials said Corpus Christi failed to account for that water release when projecting that Choke Canyon\u2019s supply would last through May 2027.<\/p>\n

But in a statement posted to the city\u2019s website late Monday<\/a>, Corpus Christi claims that Three Rivers has \u201crepeatedly\u201d ignored its offers of help, and downplayed recent changes to its water availability projections as a natural consequence of \u201cchanging conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScenario models are regularly updated to reflect changing conditions\u2026 Outputs naturally shift as these inputs evolve,\u201d Corpus Christi\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n

Corpus Christi officials went on to add that they\u2019ve had numerous meetings with Three Rivers city leaders since January, and that Corpus Christi had encouraged the smaller town to fast track any alternative water supply infrastructure projects they had, including a groundwater well project. Corpus Christi officials claimed Three Rivers ignored their repeated offers to help with that project \u201cas part of the City\u2019s good neighbor program.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in the same statement, Corpus Christi officials made a point of noting that Three Rivers, which lies upstream, \u201cis not directly or indirectly a customer of Corpus Christi Water.\u201d While the small town is not one of the half-dozen Coastal Bend communities that contracts with Corpus Christi Water, the fate of its water access is directly tied to Corpus Christi\u2019s actions. Three Rivers owns and maintains water rights to a portion of Choke Canyon\u2019s capacity \u2014 at least 1,500 acre feet, according to a 2019 water conservation and drought contingency plan<\/a>. That\u2019s the equivalent of about 489 million gallons of water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Corpus Christi has responded to inflammatory allegations from officials in Three Rivers, who blame the Coastal Bend\u2019s largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,2319,2320,820],"class_list":{"0":"post-219952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news","11":"tag-mysacoast","12":"tag-mysasotx","13":"tag-mysastaff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219952","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=219952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}