CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On June 14, 2022, Corpus Christi Water enacted Stage 1 Water Restrictions and there's no water at the end of that tunnel. Fast forward to Dec. 16, 2024, the city will be entering Stage 3 Water Restrictions. That's roughly 916 days of water restrictions.
As KRIS 6 News has previously reported, these are uncharted waters for Corpus Christi Water (CCW) and its customers. Now that the combined capacity has fallen below 20%, neighbors are being asked to use even less water.
KRIS 6 News meteorologist Stefanie Lauber sat down with CCW's Chief Operating Officer Drew Molly P.E., to discuss what CCW plans to do to keep our water flowing.
Stefanie Lauber: "So it seemed as though there was some kind of problem with the pipeline this week. I don't know if it was a leak or some kind of issue like that (but) can you speak more to that?"
Drew Molly: "But what happened a couple of days ago was there was a very small leak on the pipeline and we essentially went to where we thought the location of the leak was and we excavated exposed where the leak was. It turned out that the joint was just a little bit off from where it needed to be."
Stefanie Lauber: "Neighbors have reached out to KRIS 6 News with questions about the timing of Stage 3 restrictions. Because we've got to get back up to 30% to get out of Stage 3."
Drew Molly: "So we're, we're in this for a while once, once the city manager makes the declaration on, on monday is the, is the plan. It's gonna be a while before we get out. So we just wanna make sure that, that we absolutely have that data, just like we did in Stage 2 back in March. So we just wanna make sure that we have that level sustained below."
Stefanie Lauber: "So if you had a message for some of our neighbors who are thinking, gosh, we're going to the stage three things are getting worse. What's with all of this? Do you have any words of comfort or advice that you can give to people at home?"
Drew Molly: "What I will say is, is, you know, the community, rest assured we're working to make sure that we have some additional water supplies so that in the event that we don't get some of the rain that we're hoping for in January, February, March, we will be ok."
In the next Water Watch, KRIS 6 News will take a closer look at how each of these water sources could wash away any water woes, or whether they're just a drop in the bucket.
