Late Monday, March 30, officials in Orange Grove, located 35 miles west of Corpus Christi, announced that the city has observed a sharp decline in both water level and quality in its sole source of water, the Evangeline\/Goliad Sands Aquifer. The “rapid changes” are now threatening to make water in Orange Grove \u2014 a tiny Jim Wells County town of about 1,200 people \u2014 unsafe to drink. And the city says those changes are a direct result of activities happening in the neighboring county.<\/p>\n
“Recent large-scale groundwater pumping in rural Nueces County has coincided with measurable changes in both water levels and water quality within Orange Grove\u2019s municipal system,” city officials said in a news release<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n “This is not a theoretical concern for our community \u2014 it is something we are actively seeing in our system,” Orange Grove City Administrator Todd Wright said in the release.<\/p>\n Orange Grove has relied solely upon groundwater for the last 90 years and had projected to continue relying on the\u00a0Evangeline Aquifer through 2100, Wright told MySA on Monday. But now, Corpus Christi\u2019s accelerated groundwater pumping, as well as other high-volume users, such as Tesla\u2019s lithium battery plant outside Robstown, are putting unprecedented stress on the system and draining the aquifer faster than it can recharge.<\/p>\n On average, Orange Grove pumps about 300,000 gallons of water per day from the aquifer. Over time, that causes its water levels to drop slowly, steadily and predictably. Since 2002 \u2014 the last time Orange Grove dug a new well \u2014 the aquifer\u2019s water levels have dropped from 130 feet below the ground to 152 feet. In the last six months, however, that water level has plummeted by 13 feet.<\/p>\n “As of this morning\u2019s number, we were sitting at 165 feet (below ground),” Wright said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the\u00a0Evangeline Aquifer\u2019s makeup \u2014 which mostly consists of thick clay \u2014 recharges at less than one-fourth of an inch per year, Wright said.<\/p>\n Orange Grove is located about 10 miles away from where Corpus Christi is building a vast new network of groundwater wells<\/a> that the larger city hopes will help it address its looming water crisis. The project is managed by Corpus Christi Water, a regional public utility that supplies water to Corpus Christi and about 500,000 people across seven different counties. Earlier this month.\u00a0Gov. Greg Abbott issued an emergency declaration allowing CCW to expedite its Evangeline groundwater wells project<\/a> and to tap into more groundwater than the city was previously permitted to do. Wright said Corpus Christi now has clearance to pull “almost five times the amount of water” than Orange Grove had accounted for in its long-term water planning.<\/p>\n That accelerated and much larger-scale pumping is, in turn, muddying up what Orange Grove is pumping from the aquifer \u2014 so much so that the brush country community\u2019s water is on the verge of being undrinkable. Typically, the water Orange Grove pumps contains a mineral count, called “total dissolved solids” or TDS, of about 870 parts per million. It\u2019s a figure that has remained fairly steady since 1945, Wright said. But this week, the town\u2019s water testing showed TDS levels had skyrocketed by 30%.<\/p>\n “What we\u2019ve seen today as of this morning\u2019s readings, our TDS levels are at 1,140 (ppm),” Wright said.<\/p>\n Water is considered unsafe to drink at 1,200\u00a0ppm, the city administrator added. But he hopes to be able to find clarity and solutions soon. Orange Grove is scheduled to meet with Corpus Christi water officials on Wednesday, April 1. Wright is hopeful the two cities will be able to work toward regional solutions. Towns like his depend on them because \u2014 as Orange Grove has seen this week \u2014 their neighbors’ actions impact everyone.<\/p>\n “In the rural counties, the rural areas, the inland counties that are away from any type of body of water, groundwater is their only solution. That\u2019s their only way of life,” Wright said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late Monday, March 30, officials in Orange Grove, located 35 miles west of Corpus Christi, announced that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[847,2320,820,82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-230154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-mysanews","9":"tag-mysasotx","10":"tag-mysastaff","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","13":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230154","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=230154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}