Hurricane season couldn’t come soon enough for Corpus Christi, Texas.
“That’s sort of a dark joke that you hear around town all the time. We're praying to get, you know, hit by a head on direct hit by a hurricane,” said Bob Paulison, executive director of the Coastal Bend Industry Association.
The combined water storage level at the local lake and reservoir is just 8%.
Corpus Christi’s water supply is dwindling just as its energy sector is booming, bolstered in part by the global oil and gas supply crunch. The city’s shortage of water has already limited new industrial investment, and could eventually force cutbacks in one of the country’s busiest energy export hubs.
The city is facing 25% cuts to water usage if the region doesn’t receive enough rainfall by September.
“We don't want anyone to have to shut down,” said Kent Britton, CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi. “We don't want curtailment. We don't want it for our industry. We don't want it for our residents.”
The port is busier than ever.
“Every day through this ship channel moves about $340 million worth of goods,” Britton said. “The majority of it is export.”
Crude oil, liquefied natural gas, diesel, jet fuel, gasoline — what the world is in short supply of right now — move through this energy hub. These energy companies are an engine of the local economy. Many are also big water users. That’s why Britton said the city needs to find more sources of water.
“It's going to limit our ability to bring in large scale industry in the future,” he said. “We have had a couple (companies) that were very favorable to come in here in past years, who ended up making a decision not to because of the dwindling water supplies.”
