For more than a quarter of a century, Texas has diligently updated its state water plan every five years, a process designed to forecast water supply and demand 50 years into the future \u2014 and give communities enough warning about potential water shortages to do something about it.<\/p>\n
That warning matters because water projects can take years \u2014 sometimes decades \u2014 to plan, finance and build.<\/p>\n
For Corpus Christi and the rest of the Coastal Bend, it never came.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the planning process is built largely around past droughts \u2014 in fact, some regional plans still rely on the epic 1950s drought of record<\/a>, the longest statewide dry spell in history. But some experts now say using historical droughts isn\u2019t working because climate change is making droughts more frequent, longer and severe \u2014 raising doubts that yesterday\u2019s worst-case scenario is also tomorrow\u2019s.<\/p>\n That means the models that help secure money and political will for new water projects may be dramatically underestimating both future water needs and how quickly communities could face shortages.<\/p>\n “We need to be planning and developing infrastructure for the climate of 2050, the climate of 2100,\u201d said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University who studies drought in North America.<\/p>\n Nowhere were the weaknesses more evident than in Corpus Christi. A report released Wednesday by Texas 2036<\/a>, a nonpartisan think tank that researches the state\u2019s long-term infrastructure, population and economic needs, found that five state water plans adopted over 25 years sent conflicting signals about whether the Coastal Bend region, which includes Corpus Christi, could face shortages in the 2020s.<\/p>\n Lake Corpus Christi at 11.8% capacity Oct. 20, 2025. At the time this was the only operational boat ramp out of six in the state park. Some projected surpluses and others deficits. None provided a clear warning that the Coastal Bend needed to expand its water supply \u2014 which relies almost completely on drought-sensitive rivers and lakes \u2014 before the current crisis emerged.<\/p>\n This spring, years of drought threatened to leave Corpus Christi and surrounding communities without enough water<\/a> to meet demand as critical reservoirs fell to historic lows. Businesses and residents were asked to conserve water. Industry threatened to leave. Cities issued disaster declarations<\/a> and the governor threatened to take over.<\/p>\n Before summer rains eased the crisis, city leaders in March estimated that by May<\/a> they could have to declare a water emergency \u2014 the point when the city has six months before demand exceeds supply.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s a massive planning miscue from the water plans,\u201d said Jeremy Mazur, the director of natural resources and infrastructure policy at Texas 2036<\/a>, and the author behind the report. \u201cWhat would have been the impetus to do anything to prepare for worsening conditions in the 2020s?\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Kirkle, director of policy and legislative affairs at the Texas Water Association, added that many of the state\u2019s water models aren\u2019t taking into account more recent drought data. \u201cWorse than the 1950s\u201d doesn\u2019t always equal the \u201cworst they\u2019ve ever seen locally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n A 2023 law allowed regional planning groups<\/a> to evaluate scenarios worse than the historical drought of record. But it didn\u2019t provide money specifically to pay for updating the models at the heart of these water plans.<\/p>\n Voters last year approved $1 billion on water projects over the next 20 years<\/a>, but none of it is earmarked specifically to update water supply modeling. Meanwhile, half of the state\u2019s surface water models, which drive decisions about managing river and reservoir supplies, haven\u2019t been updated since they were created in the 1990s \u2014 updating them would cost an estimated $4.7 million.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTo really be resilient to future droughts it is necessary to consider how climate change is affecting the vulnerability of particularly water supplies, and there’s no blanket answer to that,\u201d said Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.<\/p>\n The Texas Water Development Board, which oversees the state\u2019s water planning process and folds 16 regional plans into the state water plan, follows state rules that require the use of historical drought assumptions and says they provide the best available benchmark<\/a> for engineers and planners designing reservoirs, pipelines and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n The board recognizes that the existing models may not capture more recent or severe droughts, but the agency does allow groups to use more recent hydrological data the board provides to inform their planning, Kaci Woodrome, the board\u2019s chief communications officer, said in an email.<\/p>\n \u201cPredicting the likelihood or conditions of new hydrological droughts that are more severe than the drought of record remains challenging, especially at the scale of local water supply sources,\u201d Woodrome said. She added that water planning regions may use a more recent drought than the 1950s and that the TWDB is currently working with the state climatologist to identify regions of the state that are likely to experience severe drought or excessive rainfall.<\/p>\n Coastal Bend planners wrote last year that they suspected the region was facing a new drought of record and that they needed to update their modeling for the 2026 regional water plan<\/a>, but \u201cthere was insufficient funding allocated\u201d to do so as they faced a state deadline to submit the plan.<\/p>\n The state granted more than $637,000 for the Coastal Bend\u2019s 2026 regional plan. It\u2019s unclear if any of that money was used to update the plan\u2019s modeling. Regional planners who deal with the funding did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n As a result, this year\u2019s plan likely understates the region\u2019s future water shortages, according to the Texas 2036 report.<\/p>\n Rain eventually arrived in May, then massive upstream flooding in July<\/a> eased the immediate threat, delaying the projected water emergency until the fall of 2028. The combined capacity of Corpus Christi\u2019s two main reservoirs<\/a> \u2014 Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi \u2014 jumped from below 8% in April to 42.9% this week.<\/p>\n A sign on a window at the Lake Corpus Christi State Park Texas Parks and Wildlife Department station shows current and recent levels at the reservoir on Aug. 15, 2026.<\/p>\n A state legislative interim hearing is scheduled for Aug. 24<\/a>, where lawmakers are expected to discuss regional water planning <\/a>and make recommendations to improve the water planning process.<\/p>\n For Mazur, Corpus Christi\u2019s near-crisis this year is a wake-up call to state leaders: Texas\u2019 planning process could fail to give communities enough warning before their water supplies reach a breaking point.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can’t have our policy predicated on plans that are not right,\u201d Mazur said.<\/p>\n Relying on historical droughts<\/p>\n The state water plan is built using a bottom-up approach that starts with those 16 regional water planning groups, which divide the state based on river basins and produce their plans that try to look 50 years into the future.<\/p>\n In the Coastal Bend region, by the time planners realized the drought unfolding across South Texas had become more severe than the one they were using as their benchmark \u2014 a regional drought from 2007 to 2013 \u2014 they were already deep in planning and up against a deadline to submit their plan for inclusion in the state\u2019s water plan.<\/p>\n Starting over wasn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n The Water Development Board adopted the Coastal Bend\u2019s new regional plan in January, despite concerns by planners that the region had already entered what could be an even deeper drought<\/a>.<\/p>\n Esteban Ramos, Corpus Christi\u2019s water resource manager and a member of the regional group, said the group didn\u2019t have enough data about the ongoing drought to work with \u2014 typically droughts are only fully analyzed after they end<\/a>.<\/p>\n The region ended up with a plan based on modeling for a drought that it already believes has been surpassed.<\/p>\n The state appropriated $12.6 million between 1998 and 2004 to produce water availability models around the state<\/a>. They\u2019ve undergone some updates since being created \u2014 most recently in 2019 for four river basins, at a cost of $2.1 million.<\/p>\n But half of the state\u2019s regions still haven\u2019t updated their models in decades \u2014 the cost to do so is estimated at $4.7 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is it so hard to update them? Because the state does not invest. Period. End of story,\u201d said Carlos Rubinstein, chair of the TWDB from 2013 to 2015.<\/p>\n Rubinstein said that the reason the state has not consistently reinvested in modeling is because of budget cuts to state agencies like the board.<\/p>\n While the state gives regional groups planning and research grants each cycle, which can go toward updating models, some planners say that pot of money is not enough to update their models fast enough. They add that spending the state money on modernizing drought models would divert it from other important work like data analysis, forecasts, evaluating water projects and their costs, and reaching out to communities.<\/p>\n Kirkle of the Texas Water Association said regional groups have limited pots of money that they have to stretch across a lot of competing priorities, so updating models often doesn\u2019t rise to the top.<\/p>\n Inconsistent water shortage signals<\/p>\n Over more than two decades of state water planning, the Texas 2036 report found that the plans failed to give the Coastal Bend a clear, timely and actionable warning about the 2020s water crisis \u2014 even though that was exactly what the system was created to do.<\/p>\n Mazur, the report\u2019s author, said the state\u2019s premier planning tool instead behaved like a faulty alarm for the Coastal Bend, producing an inconsistent, \u201con\/off\u201d warning signal.<\/p>\n None of the plans projected a significant surface water shortage in the Coastal Bend similar to what cities like Corpus Christi and surrounding communities confronted this year. One plan projected shortages for groundwater users and water treatment capacity in the Coastal Bend, but did not predict shortages of surface water, which makes up more than 90% of Corpus Christi\u2019s supply.<\/p>\n To someone reading the plans in sequence, the result was a kind of planning \u201chokey pokey,\u201d Mazur said, because water shortages appeared, disappeared and reappeared, as did the proposed water projects intended to address them.<\/p>\n Out of the 50 recommended strategies for this decade recommended in the 2021-22 plan, only one \u2014 a brackish groundwater desalination plant in Alice \u2014 had been built by 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’re like a city council member, a chamber of commerce member, hospital director, school board member, member of the committee,\u201d Mazur said, \u201cyou would look at these plans, and there was no consistent signal across these plans about what was going to happen in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n A “Protect Hillcrest” sign opposed to a desalination facility stands in the yard of a Hillcrest residence in Corpus Christi on May 30, 2026. Now, the city is scrambling to find new water sources wherever it can as quickly as it can, drilling groundwater wells<\/a> and reviving discussion of a hugely expensive seawater desalination plant <\/a>\u2014 a drought-proof way to turn millions of gallons of seawater into fresh water \u2014 the City Council had killed last year. That project is scheduled for a vote Sept. 1.<\/p>\n The city is also working on a project to recycle and reuse wastewater. But it\u2019s unclear whether it will all be enough water to ward off an emergency down the road.<\/p>\n “Day zero is still imminent,\u201d Mazur said, referring to when Corpus Christi could run out of water.<\/p>\n The Texas 2036 report doesn\u2019t blame any single plan or planner. The Texas Water Development Board and the Coastal Bend planning group followed the state\u2019s rules and used the drought assumptions those rules required, the report says.<\/p>\n The report recommends that lawmakers pass legislation requiring a \u201creadiness phase\u201d before each water planning cycle so regional groups can update outdated hydrological data; incorporate planning for droughts worse than historical droughts; and consider longer timelines for when water plans are produced and submitted.<\/p>\n Climate change\u2019s role<\/p>\n For all of its modeling and all of its new spending to expand its water supply, Texas still doesn\u2019t openly account for the impacts of climate change in its water planning, some experts said. In a Republican-run state, the phrase itself is highly politicized and skirted around in government documents.<\/p>\n Rubinstein, the former TWDB chair, said this is where water planning gets tricky.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don’t then take into account how technology has improved and how conditions have changed \u2014 and here’s where we get into the words nobody likes to use: climate variability and the changing climate \u2014 and you do not plug that in, then you get into trouble,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Evgenia Spears, water program coordinator for the Lone Star Sierra Club Chapter, noted that local water planning already considers factors such as population growth, industrial growth, infrastructure and land use. Climate change research, she argues, should receive the same consideration.<\/p>\n “Why would we ignore the best available science as we plan for our most precious resource?” she said.<\/p>\n Texas has experienced hotter temperatures in recent years, including 2023, the hottest ever recorded in Texas<\/a> based on average temperature, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n Cook, the Columbia University climate scientist, said Texas increasingly experiences “hydroclimate whiplash,\u201d which he describes as rapid swings between extremely dry and extremely wet conditions.<\/p>\n Nielsen-Gammon said hotter temperatures particularly impact the surface water supplies like lakes and rivers that form the backbone of the state\u2019s water supply. That was underscored in Corpus Christi, which gets more than 96% of its supply from surface water<\/a>, according to the 2022 state water plan.<\/p>\n This year, Rubinstein said, he saw another failure in the modeling playing out. Corpus Christi draws from three major river basins \u2014 the Colorado, Nueces and Lavaca-Navidad \u2014 but he said planners had not modeled a drought that hammered all three at the same time.<\/p>\n So even though Corpus Christi had diversified its surface water sources \u2014 pulling water from three reservoirs in three different river basins \u2014 the drought was so broad and long that it didn\u2019t matter<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that the models are useless, Rubinstein said, but a model can only address the conditions it is designed to simulate.<\/p>\n Nielsen-Gammon said that if he could change one aspect of Texas water planning, he would like to see a worst-case drought scenario that all regional planners could incorporate into future plans. But he recognizes that it\u2019s a hard thing to do. Climate projections carry uncertainty, and large water infrastructure projects often cost billions of dollars, he said.<\/p>\n “It becomes hard to tell whether you’re providing enough additional capacity or too much and wasting money \u2014 or not enough and leaving yourself more vulnerable,” he said.<\/p>\n Spears, the Lone Star Sierra Club coordinator, said Corpus Christi\u2019s dilemma “shows that communities may need a larger margin of safety as we plan for water.”<\/p>\n Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on The Texas Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than a quarter of a century, Texas has diligently updated its state water plan every five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-412918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412918","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=412918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}