CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 On Tuesday night, the Corpus Christi City Council agreed to push back a vote on how much water refineries, businesses and households will have to cut back in usage if the city goes into a Level 1 emergency.<\/p>\n
Right now, the city is in Stage 3 drought.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Rio Grande Valley public officials wasted no time in sealing the deal on a $1 billion desalination project projected to deliver 50 million gallons of water per day in another drought-stricken region.<\/p>\n
Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino, Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez,\u00a0together with representatives from U.S. Desalination LLC and IDE Technologies and startup company RGV Desal, made the recent announcement at a news conference.<\/p>\n
At a time when the state is the fastest growing in the U.S., public water supplies are dwindling because of population growth and drought hitting different regions across Texas.<\/p>\n
The desalination plant will be constructed on South Padre Island.<\/p>\n
Two hours north up the Texas coast, Corpus Christi leaders have been scrambling on emergency water plans because their water supply could run dry in less than a year if the drought continues and the city can\u2019t find alternative water sources.<\/p>\n
Last week, Corpus Christi Water executives delivered a 53-page plan to cut back on water usage. One idea is to reduce water consumption by 25% per household or risk taking a city fine.<\/p>\n
At the Tuesday council meeting, elected officials expressed their discontent with the plan, effectively putting the critical vote on hold until a further date.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi is under great public pressure and from the governor\u2019s office to finalize an emergency plan and find new water resources.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s two primary sources of water, Choke Canyon Reservoir and Lake Corpus Christi, sit below 10%, according to the city\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Late last year, city leaders pulled the plug on a highly controversial desalination plant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A construction timeline for the Rio Grande Valley desalination plant is unknown at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 On Tuesday night, the Corpus Christi City Council agreed to push back a vote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1061,155,157,156,1570,56,39655,1063,223,1225,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-273082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-app-public-safety","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-ctv","tag-houston","tag-john-salazar","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273082","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=273082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}