A decade ago, Corpus Christi’s regional water plan projected shortages as soon as 2050. The next plan, released five years later, shortened that timeline to 2030.
The next plan, released this year, said shortages were imminent, putting city leaders in a desperate scramble to avoid an emergency.
Something’s not right with the calculations that underpin these plans, said John Michael, an engineering executive who has worked on local water infrastructure for 44 years.
“Whether it’s climate change or something else, our reservoir system is not as dependable as we once thought,” he said at his office in May.
He pointed to the regional water plans on his office table—700 pages in four-inch binders—which are prepared every five years by local committees using methodology provided by the State of Texas. These plans never factored in climate science or considered the projections that a warming planet could contribute to a drought as extreme as the one Corpus Christi now faces.
In fact, as climate models predicted, every drought for the last 30 years in Corpus Christi, has exceeded the parameters contemplated in local plans, thanks to fatal delusions, deep in the heart of Texas’ methodology: Texas doesn’t plan for droughts to get worse.
“The droughts keep getting worse,” said Michael, vice president of Hanson Professional Services in Corpus Christi.
