“However, if a system is permanently impaired it’s also possible that recovery is not going to reach former levels,” Montagna said.
Studies suggest that systems around Corpus Christi may already be “permanently impaired,” Montagna said, largely attributable to a sustained lack of fresh water.
Similar problems span the lower Texas coast. The Rio Grande hasn’t flowed consistently into the Gulf of Mexico for the reason that early 2000s. On the Colorado River, which runs through Austin, authorities have kept water releases to the coastal wetlands at a bare minimum in recent times. Jennifer Walker, director of the National Wildlife Foundation’s Texas Coast and Water Program, called it “critical life support.”
“Water to satisfy environmental needs is often the primary to be negotiated away,” Walker said. “Our bays and estuaries are a hugely necessary a part of Texas they usually’re not something that will be easy to return and fix.”
In Corpus Christi, a significant refining and export hub for Texas shale oil and gas, city authorities have imposed water use restrictions on residents, with more to return if reservoir levels fall below 30 percent. But the region’s largest industrial water consumers operate unabated, because of a purchasable exemption from drought restrictions for industrial users—$0.25 per 1,000 gallons—passed by the town council in 2018.
That includes users like ExxonMobil’s massive latest plastics plant, which is permitted to make use of as much as 25 million gallons of water per day—1 / 4 of the regional summertime water demand.
“Industry can proceed full bore through all of those drought stages and the estuary gets cut off early,” said a water resource consultant from Corpus Christi who requested anonymity to preserve his business relationship with the town. “I feel it’s a looming disaster. They are still attempting to recruit all these water-intensive industries along the coast.”
Proceeds from the exemption program were purported to fund development of seawater desalination plants that will expand the regional water supply and meet demands of a booming industrial buildout. The first plant was initially planned to start operations early last yr, nevertheless it stays mired in challenges and years away from breaking ground. Meanwhile, the commercial buildout continues.
Illustration: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News
Central Texas: People and Grass
Two hundred miles inland, the five-county region surrounding Austin, Texas’ high-tech capital city, has grown faster than any US metro area for 12 straight years. Its water supplies haven’t.
In 2022, less water flowed into City of Austin reservoirs than ever before, city staff said at a public water task force meeting on Tuesday. Last yr was only barely higher. The largest reservoir serving Austin, Lake Travis, fell from about 80 percent full in January 2022 to 38 percent full initially of this yr.
