# Corpus Christi, TX and the surrounding areas are running out of fresh water **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 3, 2026, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741 "2026-05-03T03:02:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/21 "2026-05-03T16:04:55Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Lawns are far and in between here, now. My brother lives in West Texas and gave up on his lawn many years ago. For the last 10 years he has been using an artifical grass lawn and just vacuums it occasionally. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/22 "2026-05-03T16:30:46Z")
Or the drought in Montevideo, Uruguay (pop \>1 million) in 2023- they didn’t turn the taps off, but what came out was chlorinated salt water instead, for several months, until it rained enough. Drinking water was distributed in bottles and tankers, on the basis of need. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/23 "2026-05-03T22:25:15Z")
Interesting… So what household uses is “clean” salt water appropriate for? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/24 "2026-05-03T22:48:23Z")
Wouldn’t salt water corrode the plumbing? Googling it certainly seems like the result of that would be widespread damage. EDIT: After more googling, [it appears to have damaged all sorts of things, and made people sick](https://apnews.com/article/uruguay-water-supply-salty-stomach-issues-digestion-crisis-af8b2d965cf7043b4d40a116b9dded8a). ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/25 "2026-05-04T07:11:44Z")
Flushing toilets? It wasn’t as salty as pure sea water, so showering cold would be OK, and some cooking and cleaning. Not ideal, but there’s not really any good options once you get to that point, and I don’t think anyone was expecting it to be more than a little bit of salt for a short time. Normally it rains a lot more in winter there, so it was just going to be until it rained. I just happened to visit a few months later, when it was almost back to normal. ---
**Author:** ![sunacres](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@sunacres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunacres)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/26 "2026-05-04T13:32:02Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > As usual, a US crisis, (and yes no doubt this is one), becomes the worstest and firstest in the world without any recognition of equivalent and worse situations in the quite recent past. Quite recent indeed, just last year Tehran was on the brink, and it’s not like the US is helping to improve their situation much. Not to minimize the case of Corpus Christi today, but having lived through water rationing in California during the 70’s I can’t help but feel any town in trouble that’s not already restricting water hasn’t faced up to reality. Car washes? Really? ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/27 "2026-05-04T14:53:04Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > Not to minimize the case of Corpus Christi today, but having lived through water rationing in California during the 70’s I can’t help but feel any town in trouble that’s not already restricting water hasn’t faced up to reality. Car washes? Really? That’s very much the case here. One of things that mystifies me is the mood of some people who want to “throw all the bums out” of the city council. As if getting rid of a group of incumbents who are split over what to do and replacing them with a group of new council members who are just as split over what to do would actually help anything. They want to get rid of the pro Inner Harbor mayor and at large council members, which would mean replacing them with an anti Inner Harbor mayor and at large council members, while simultaneously getting rid of the anti Inner Harbor district council members and replacing them with pro Inner Harbor district council members. Yet despite the fact that this plan obviously makes no sense, there are a large number of people here in Corpus who want to do so, which in my book means that they aren’t taking the problem seriously. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/28 "2026-05-05T02:51:26Z")
We have had some rain recently. Based on the numbers being thrown around by the local meteorologists, my best guess is that it’s about 1 month worth of water for this time of year. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/29 "2026-05-05T03:27:46Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > The city reached an agreement to provide Valero, which runs one of the refineries, up to 8 million gallons of reclaimed type 2 water. Valero will pay the City’s raw water cost adjustment rate for metered recycled wate… The devil’s in the details. That’s pretty much exactly what I did for a living until recently. We sold our reclaimed water at a cheaper rate than drinking water to the refinery we were servicing at a much greater production cost than drinking water. All part of the negotiations to get industry buy-in of course, but that’s why you need laws compelling industry to accept reclaimed water when available. We saved a fair chunk of drinking water which everybody loved in drought years. When we weren’t in drought years, the bean counters would howl and want to mothball facilities because they operate so deep in the red due to those unfavorable industry-friendly recycled water contracts. But you can’t mothball facilities without massive issues. Operational knowledge is lost and where and how do you make effective use of the idled labor? Water reclamation is its own thing and a very similar but specifically different skill set from wastewater treatment or water treatment - instantly up to speed omni-competent operators aren’t the norm. Moreover facilities not continuously running rapidly become inoperable when you try to restart them. Mechanical and electrical systems hate prolonged down times, especially when you’re dealing with chemically treated wastewater. Rapid starts and starts (say trying to run a few days a week) are just as bad as the process wants stability and you eventually end up fruitlessly chasing you tail in a perpetual state of out-of-spec upset. > [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > On the supply side, the Corpus Christi city council has been focusing on both drilling more wells to increase groundwater supply, as well as trying to get a desalination plant built. The first is resource limited as a finite asset. The second is expensive in power-consumption and quite dirty. You want toilet-to-tap, either direct treatment or via ground-water injection and then treating it. Everybody hates it because it gives them the heebie-jeebies, but it really is the best recycling option. Much cheaper and relatively less polluting than desalination, just a better tech solution all around. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741/30 "2026-05-05T19:03:54Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > We would be limited to just over 5K gallons per month per household. I make that out to be ~630 l/household/day. Are 12-person households the standard in Texas? Because that’s primarily how we handled our Day Zero situation. 50l/person/day. We still regularly use less than that in my house. The idea that any commercial car washes are still operating in that kind of situation is crazy to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/corpus-christi-tx-and-the-surrounding-areas-are-running-out-of-fresh-water/1029741.md?page=1)