In response, Wright promised federal permitting reform to speed up construction projects but didn\u2019t address the impending emergency, <\/a>which could lead to shutdowns in the industrial sector, business closures and evacuations of some areas in a worst-case scenario. Cloud did not follow up.<\/p>\n If historic drought conditions persist, some officials have warned that the region\u2019s three reservoirs could dry up entirely this year. The city\u2019s latest draft projections take a more optimistic view, showing water service available through at least next spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is some hope, I think,\u201d said Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni in an interview last week. \u201cWe\u2019re doing everything we can do given what we inherited.\u201d<\/p>\n City leaders previously said<\/a> emergency water curtailment could begin as soon as May, then pushed that date to October after Gov. Greg Abbott issued orders that waived pumping limitations<\/a> and expedited permits for Corpus Christi\u2019s newly planned wellfields. Those wells, however, are producing less than expected, Zanoni said.\u00a0<\/p>\n If reservoirs dry up, Corpus Christi\u2019s wells might be able to keep water flowing to most toilets, sinks and showers, but not to the multi-billion-dollar complexes operated by energy giants like ExxonMobil, Valero, Occidental Chemical, Citgo and Flint Hills Resources, which collectively account for more than half of the region\u2019s water consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCorpus Christi is running out of water,\u201d said Brooke Paup, chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, during a speaking event at the University of Texas on Monday. \u201cThat\u2019s huge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem goes far beyond Corpus Christi, she said. Huge swaths of Texas are staring down incoming deficits.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a shit show. We need to right this ship,\u201d said Paup, a former chair of the Texas Water Development Board. \u201cIt\u2019s a water crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Without a long term solution to this crisis in sight, cities, towns, refineries and chemical plants around Corpus Christi are urgently drilling their own wells. Even the region\u2019s two main hospital districts are pursuing plans to drill wells, according to Roland Barrera, a member of the Corpus Christi City Council since 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t that crazy?\u201d said Barrera, 59, the owner of an employee benefits and life insurance company. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGreat News for Corpus Christi\u201d<\/p>\n Officials acknowledge that local aquifers only offer a temporary solution. Emergency projects propose<\/a> to pump up to 14 times what state water plans consider<\/a> a sustainable rate in Nueces County, where Corpus Christi is located, and no entity exists to regulate groundwater.\u00a0<\/p>\n The region\u2019s largest water consumer, a five-year-old plastics plant operated by Exxon and the Saudi Basic Industries Corp., also drilled test wells recently but struck salty water, Inside Climate News reported<\/a> on April 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next day, Fitch Ratings Inc. downgraded its outlook<\/a> for Corpus Christi from \u201cstable\u201d to \u201cnegative,\u201d citing \u201cthe city\u2019s elevated water supply risk and the potential effects on its economy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n City leadership responded with an April 8 statement<\/a> that said, \u201cresolving the water shortage is the City\u2019s top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n Fitch\u2019s revision followed a similar downgrade by the rating service in October<\/a>, and a downgrade by Moody\u2019s in December<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an alarm bell, but not a five-alarm fire,\u201d said Bill King, a fellow in public finance at Rice University\u2019s Baker Institute and former mayor of the Gulf Coast city of Kemah. \u201cLooking at the future, (Fitch analysts) don\u2019t see things getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n Exxon, the world\u2019s largest private oil company, launched a Facebook ad campaign<\/a> on April 10 touting imminent federal assistance with the region\u2019s water crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGreat news for Corpus Christi\u2019s future!\u201d the Exxon ad said. \u201cPresident Trump recently offered his full support for a desalination project.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For almost a decade, the region has tried and failed to build a seawater desalination plant. Exxon\u2019s ad cited a comment Trump made about the project during his February visit to Corpus Christi: \u201cI\u2019m going to get that thing approved for you.\u201d<\/p>\n The ad gave no other indications of plans for a federal response. Neither ExxonMobil nor the White House responded to repeated requests for comment. On Saturday, White House social media accounts posted a video montage from Corpus Christi<\/a> with a hard rock soundtrack that promised more oil drilling but didn\u2019t mention water.\u00a0<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Energy, Emery Washington, said the agency is actively working to help bring treated oilfield wastewater, also called produced water, into Texas water supplies.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe encourage municipalities, water districts, and industry in the Corpus Christi region to explore how treated produced water could become part of a diversified, drought-resilient water portfolio,\u201d Washington said in a statement to Inside Climate News. \u201cOur office stands ready to collaborate with local stakeholders, the State of Texas, and industry partners to accelerate practical solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n City Councilmember Barrera hasn\u2019t heard of any progress. Desalination facilities of the size proposed by the city and other entities around Corpus Christi Bay require electrical infrastructure and power purchase agreements that typically take years to procure, he said. If those arrangements were underway, he would hear about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hearing a bunch of cynicism,\u201d said Barrera, a grandfather who traces his roots to Spanish settlers of the Coastal Bend. \u201cI haven\u2019t gotten the impression that there\u2019s anything moving.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely Unbelievable\u201d<\/p>\n Plans to build desalination plants can\u2019t help this region avoid the immediate onset of emergency water restrictions, according to Drew Molly, a former chief operating officer for Corpus Christi Water who now serves as chief water officer for the City of Houston. But they could determine when the emergency ends.<\/p>\n If the region implements curtailment, Molly said, only a major change in weather patterns or the addition of a large, new water supply will pull it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow, unfortunately, we\u2019re headed towards curtailment for who-knows-how-long,\u201d Molly said during a 90-minute interview in downtown Houston in March. \u201cBecause we don\u2019t have a desal plant lined up.\u201d<\/p>\n Molly spent 25 years in Houston as an engineer and then municipal water manager before he went to Corpus Christi in 2022. He said he liked his colleagues and loved the challenge. But three years later he resigned after what he said was the hardest work in his life left him feeling like a hamster on a wheel when the city council cancelled its desalination project in September 2025.<\/p>\n Molly, who also serves as chair of the American Water Works Association, said operators of the region\u2019s industrial complexes had already begun planning for water curtailment before he left.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe industry will never reveal their cards, because it\u2019s highly competitive,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll see it behind closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n Molly doesn\u2019t think the economic consequences of water curtailment will be as disastrous as predictions he\u2019s heard. He expects industries to work with regulators and the governor\u2019s office for emergency waivers of air and wastewater permits. So, a 25 percent cut in water use might not mean a 25 percent loss of production.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n But, if extreme drought persists and the water shortage deepens, Corpus Christi will face big legal challenges in forcing through further cuts, Molly said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the same set of cards that Corpus has, no other city would be able to figure out how to get out of this,\u201d he said. \u201cBy God, we need to get some rain! This is absolutely unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n Greg Waller, an operational hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth, said colleagues in Corpus Christi recently asked what he thought it would take to refill their lakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Waller said he didn\u2019t know. He doubted it would be the tropical, summer storm that the city was counting on. Soils are so dry that one big rain might just soak in where it falls. Tropical Storm Harold rained across the entire Nueces River watershed in 2023, he said, but produced virtually no runoff into the lakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how dry it was,\u201d Waller said. And it\u2019s gotten drier since.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDead Canaries Everywhere\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Only a \u201clarge-scale pattern change that stalls over the area for a while to give us repeated rounds of rain\u201d will break this drought, he said. That isn\u2019t likely to happen until fall, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t always deliver the best news,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we have to provide the best science.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott\u2019s office said in March<\/a> that Corpus Christi\u2019s two main reservoirs on the Nueces River system could be depleted<\/a> as soon as May. Its third reservoir, Lake Texana, could be dry by November, San Patricio County Judge David Krebs told an April 6 town hall meeting<\/a> about water.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city\u2019s emergency groundwater projects may provide enough water to meet the most critical needs, like drinking and flushing toilets. They won\u2019t be enough to supply the industrial complexes, according to Don Roach, who spent 14 years as assistant general manager of the San Patricio Municipal Water District, which buys water from Corpus Christi and provides it to industrial users.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWithout lots and lots of rain, industry will be forced to shut down,\u201d said Roach, who produced a two-page analysis<\/a> to support his conclusion. \u201cThis is an unprecedented disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n City leaders have drawn heavy criticism for their apparent lack of plans to confront this situation. But Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, doesn\u2019t blame local leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo city in Texas has a plan for if its lakes go dry,\u201d he said in an interview at his office in San Marcos on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n About a decade ago, when he was deputy director of the Texas Water Development Board, Mace proposed developing guidelines for cities to curtail water use during an emergency. But the topic was too touchy. No one wanted to talk about it. So he never produced state guidelines, and there are none today.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mace, a leading authority on water management in Texas, wore a shirt that said, \u201cDEAD CANARIES EVERYWHERE\u201d\u2014a jestful reference to the canaries in coal mines whose death warned all present to flee for their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Corpus Christi, everybody is talking about water, said Isabel Araiza, a local college professor and founder of a nonprofit focused on city policy. Seven years ago, when she started posting, virtually no one here knew anything about seawater desalination or industrial water demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now she hears about it everywhere: in grocery stores, at restaurants and on TV.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are anxious,\u201d said Araiza, a Corpus Christi native with a Ph.D. from Boston College.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4O6A0229-1024x683.jpg\"\/)
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A well at Corpus Christi\u2019s western wellfield pumps water into the Nueces River on March 31. Credit: Dylan Baddour\/Inside Climate News<\/p>\n![\"Gulf](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776730149_588_4O6A0373.jpg\"\/)
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Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, a plastics production facility operated by Exxon Mobil and Saudi Arabia, started operations in 2022 and is the largest water consumer in the Corpus Christi region. Credit: Dylan Baddour\/Inside Climate News<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4O6A0094-2-1024x683.jpg\"\/)
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A pond is seen drying up on land in rural Jim Wells County, about 40 miles outside Corpus Christi. Credit: Dylan Baddour\/Inside Climate News<\/p>\n
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