{"id":246027,"date":"2026-04-12T06:32:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/246027\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T06:32:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:32:33","slug":"texas-town-declares-disaster-as-water-crisis-worsens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/246027\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas town declares disaster as water crisis worsens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three weeks after officials in Three Rivers announced<\/a> that the rural Coastal Bend community was perilously close to losing its access to water due to the actions of its neighbors downstream in Corpus Christi, the mayor has now issued a disaster declaration over the worsening water crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mayor of the City of Three Rivers has issued this Drought Disaster Declaration in response to existing drought conditions,\u201d city officials said in a Facebook post late Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis action is intended to ensure the City has the flexibility to marshal resources\u2026 to respond to (the) drought conditions. It also positions the City to pursue and access additional funding for emergency measures related to the drought response,\u201d the post reads.<\/p>\n

The declaration states that demand for water is far exceeding resources<\/a> available in the Coastal Bend, which is in the middle of a historic, five-year-long drought that has depleted the region\u2019s reservoirs. That includes Choke Canyon Reservoir, the manmade lake that supplies Three Rivers with nearly all of its fresh water.<\/p>\n

Last month, Three Rivers officials went public with allegations that gross mismanagement and \u201cinaccurate water projections\u201d by the city of Corpus Christi had left the smaller town at the brink of losing access to Choke Canyon as its levels continue to plummet. As of Friday, the lake was just 7.5% full, according to Water Data for Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Additionally, in recent weeks, Corpus Christi has begun to accelerate its efforts to extract water from the\u00a0Evangeline Aquifer<\/a>. It\u2019s part of the city\u2019s larger efforts to stave off an impending water crisis so severe that it\u2019s prompted a response from Gov. Greg Abbott, who recently waived a host of environmental permitting requirements in order to allow Corpus Christi to fast-track its groundwater well projects<\/a>. Corpus Christi capitalized on that intervention and almost immediately began drawing as much water from the aquifer as it could while rushing to dig dozens more wells.<\/p>\n

But those actions set off a firestorm in cities<\/a> across the Coastal Bend \u2014 particularly the inland cities that rely upon the Evangeline Aquifer as their sole source of water. Three Rivers\u2019 disaster declaration makes note of how those actions are stressing already precarious resources and leading to \u201ccritically low water supply levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegional water demand is exceeding available supply from existing sources, including surface water and groundwater systems,\u201d the disaster declaration reads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The disaster declaration echoes the urgency of Abbott\u2019s March 18 proclamation of the \u201cimminent threat\u201d that the ongoing drought poses to the Coastal Bend. And it similarly empowers the city to waive or suspend certain regulations in order to address the crisis. It also gives the tiny town a way to tap into emergency funding for infrastructure and disaster relief funding and to levy any other available resources \u201cthat are reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disaster declaration \u00a0echoes Abbott\u2019s March 18 warning that the ongoing drought poses an \u201cimminent threat\u201d to the Coastal Bend. It lets the city loosen certain rules so it can respond more quickly. It also gives the small town access to emergency funding for infrastructure and disaster relief, along with the ability to use whatever resources it reasonably needs to handle the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City of Three Rivers, Texas, is taking extraordinary measures to prevent the threats of this devastating drought to our community,\u201d the declaration reads.<\/p>\n

The emergency disaster declaration will be in effect for the next seven days but can be extended by a vote of the Three Rivers City Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three weeks after officials in Three Rivers announced that the rural Coastal Bend community was perilously close to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2320,820,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-246027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-mysasotx","9":"tag-mysastaff","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246027","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=246027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}