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In Corpus Christi, Texas, a growing water shortage is raising concerns about whether the city is prepared for what's ahead. About a half a million people could soon face critical limits on their water supply. Lucio Vasquez of The Texas Newsroom has the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUNDRY MACHINES RUNNING)
LUCIO VASQUEZ, BYLINE: Ashley Ortiz spends her days surrounded by water. At the laundromat where she works in Corpus Christi, machines hum and churn from morning to night. But at home, she says she has to be more careful about how water is used.
ASHLEY ORTIZ: It's hard to learn how to conserve and not use if you don't want to - or remind your kids, like, don't let the water run.
VASQUEZ: For Ortiz and her three boys, cutting back on water has been a daily adjustment. And across the Corpus Christi region just off the Gulf of Mexico, it's becoming a shared reality for more than 500,000 people.
ORTIZ: It's just something that you never think you would have a problem with. Like one day, we might be out of water.
VASQUEZ: Corpus Christi's water supply is shrinking after years of drought made worse by climate change. Two of the reservoirs the region relies on for water, Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon, have dried up. They're now at less than 9% capacity.
PETER ZANONI: So what we're seeing is those two reservoirs are at historic, never-seen-before low.
VASQUEZ: Peter Zanoni is the city manager of Corpus Christi. He says the city has already been restricting watering lawns and limits on washing cars at home for more than a year. Dead grass can be seen everywhere. A local water park has been closed, and it's likely going to get worse. Zanoni says the city is expecting to declare a water emergency by the end of the summer.
ZANONI: Six months from that point, supply would not be enough for demand. It's not that we would be out of water, it's that there would be a gap in supply to demand.
VASQUEZ: At that point, the city will be forced to have everyone cut water use. A proposed plan calls for a 25% reduction. So why is this happening? It's a combination of several things - less rain, more heat and heavy demand from the local oil refining industry, combined with years of delayed planning. Corpus Christi relies heavily on rainfall to refill its reservoirs, but in recent years, that rain hasn't come, part of a prolonged drought across South Texas. John Nielsen-Gammon is the Texas state climatologist.
JOHN NIELSEN-GAMMON: Anytime you're in that sort of situation, the weather could shoot blanks for long enough and eventually you can run out of water.
VASQUEZ: He says climate change has led to higher temperatures.
NIELSEN-GAMMON: It increases evaporation losses from lakes and decreases soil moisture.
VASQUEZ: The city relies heavily on just a couple of reservoirs. So when those run low, the whole system is under stress. That impact is hard to miss.
I'm standing in Lake Corpus Christi. Water's pulled back so far you can now walk into areas that were once completely underwater. And there was probably five, 10 feet of water directly above my head, but now the ground beneath my feet is very dry. It's starved for any kind of hydration. It's a shell of what it once was.
Dorina Murgulet is the director of the Center of Water Supply Studies (ph) at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi.
DORINA MURGULET: Relying on just surface reservoirs in an area like ours, it's not feasible for long-term sustainability.
VASQUEZ: Murgulet says what's happening here is a warning about the limits of the region's water system.
MURGULET: There has to be contingency plans and looking at different sources of water.
VASQUEZ: The region has also grown over the last two decades. The population has increased by about 13%. More people means more water is needed. Corpus Christi is also a national hub for oil refining and exports, industries that use more than half of the region's water supply. City manager Peter Zanoni says if dry conditions continue, the economic fallout could be massive.
ZANONI: And so you're talking about job loss. You're talking about a real potential for economic downturn in this region, not just Corpus Christi but the two- to three- to seven-county region.
VASQUEZ: City leaders say they're trying to avoid that worst-case scenario. They've been increasing water imports from outside sources and quickly drilling groundwater wells under emergency permits granted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, but city officials say these efforts have produced less water than hoped. The city is also exploring long-term solutions like desalination and water recycling, but those projects could take years to complete. Some of those same ideas were on the table years ago, but Zanoni says they were never moved forward.
ZANONI: We've heard about it in local government, the old - the adage of kicking the can down the road.
VASQUEZ: Other fast-growing cities in the south like Phoenix and Las Vegas face similar issues - prolonged drought, rapid growth and dwindling water supply. As Corpus braces for deeper cutbacks, the strain is adding to a growing sense of unease for residents like Ashley Ortiz. Back at the laundromat where she works, the machines are still running, undeterred by the looming shortage. But she's concerned for her children's future.
ORTIZ: As a mother, it's like, I don't want my kids to have to worry about something that we shouldn't have to worry about.
VASQUEZ: Ortiz says she loves living here, but the worsening water shortage may push her to move out. For NPR News, I'm Lucio Vasquez. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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