City leaders hope state funding arrives before the community runs out of water from the lake.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Leaders in Mathis are trying to solve two major problems at the same time: aging infrastructure and a worsening water crisis.<\/p>\n
The city recently approved $10 million in certificate of obligation bonds, with most of the money going toward street repairs. The rest is expected to help pay for projects such as a new City Hall complex.<\/p>\n
But city leaders also face a separate challenge.<\/p>\n
Mayor Ciri Villarreal said Mathis could lose access to water from Lake Corpus Christi as early as November if the region does not receive significant rainfall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thinking that if we don\u2019t get a substantial amount of rain to help build the levels in the lake back up, by November or December of this year, we might be at the point where we can\u2019t pull any water from the lake anymore,\u201d Villarreal said.<\/p>\n
The city already has drilled one water well near its water plant and now has a second test well in place.<\/p>\n
For now, Mathis plans to eventually blend well water with water from Lake Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n
However, once lake water is no longer available, Mathis will need a reverse osmosis system to make the well water good enough to drink.<\/p>\n
City leaders said they do not currently have enough money to build the system and are counting on state grant funding to help cover the cost.<\/p>\n
City Manager Cedric Davis said he believes lawmakers and state leaders who have already helped Mathis reach this point will continue to support the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough all of the senators, the House of Representatives, the local commissions and boards, everyone has helped us get to this stage,\u201d Davis said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that help is just going to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if funding arrives soon, city leaders said building the reverse osmosis system could still take six months to a year because of the time needed for design, construction, testing and connecting it to the system.<\/p>\n
That means Mathis could be in a race against the clock to secure drinking water before Lake Corpus Christi can no longer supply the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City leaders hope state funding arrives before the community runs out of water from the lake. CORPUS CHRISTI,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-260504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260504","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=260504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}