Water Woes hit Orange Grove: Officials track rapid aquifer changes<\/a><\/p>\nCity leaders announced earlier this week that well levels have fallen to just feet above emergency thresholds. They believe the decline may be connected to Corpus Christi\u2019s use of multiple groundwater wells in western Nueces County.<\/p>\n
Leaders from both cities met in Orange Grove to address the issue and agreed to further study the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a shared aquifer,\u201d said Orange Grove City Administrator Todd Wright. \u201cIt\u2019s not isolated or confined or restricted to just one city. It\u2019s for all of South Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi has increasingly relied on groundwater wells as a temporary solution to maintain water supply while long-term infrastructure projects – such as desalination plants – are developed.<\/p>\n
But Orange Grove officials say they\u2019ve also noticed changes in water quality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trend normally in the high 800s to low 900s,\u201d Wright said, referring to contaminant levels measured in total dissolved solids (TDS). \u201cBut over the last year, we\u2019ve reached the 1,100 range. That\u2019s a spike that we want to dive into to understand what\u2019s causing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both cities agreed to hire independent hydrogeologists to study whether Corpus Christi\u2019s wells are affecting Orange Grove\u2019s water supply.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni urged caution in drawing conclusions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know that for sure, and we caution them not to rush to conclusions,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cNobody in the room today was a hydrogeologist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said the meeting was productive and emphasized the importance of protecting a shared resource by analogizing the situation to multiple people drinking out of the same drink.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all of us going into that same drink of water,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to take a conservative approach to its use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orange Grove officials plan to provide an update during an emergency city council meeting scheduled for 7:30 AM Friday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials in Orange Grove say a sharp drop in local well levels has raised concerns about the region\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2347,155,50547,22949,27,29,28,89479,13003,2646],"class_list":{"0":"post-231323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-city-leaders","9":"tag-corpus-christi","10":"tag-groundwater-wells","11":"tag-orange-grove","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-news","15":"tag-todd-wright","16":"tag-water-quality","17":"tag-water-supply"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231323","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=231323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}