In South Texas, a town struggles for water

A small town in southern Texas rushes to find other sources of drinking water while the serious drought seizes the region and threatens to dry its main diet.

The city of Mathis generally pumps its drinking water from Lake Corpus Christi, but the worsening of drought conditions should plunge too low water to extract usable water safely, according to the director of Mathis City Cedric Davis.

“It is not that we miss water or that we are going to be completely dry,” said Davis. “It will be difficult to remove clear water from the lake because we shoot mud with water.”

All of this mud could damage the city’s filtration and water treatment systems, he added. Mathis has a population of around 4,300 people, according to 2020 data from US Census Bureau.

The situation in Texas highlights an increasing problem in the parts subject to the country’s drought – and the world – while climate change changes the precipitation patterns, intensifies drought and undermines the availability of drinking water.

In 2023, the city of New Orleans was faced with a drinking water crisis after abnormally low levels in the Mississippi river struck by the drought made the salt water encroaches in the water intake installations.

Last year, persistent drought and years of low precipitation pushed the tanks to Mexico City at historically low levels, triggering a serious shortage of water in the most populous city in North America.

South Texas was at the grip of a period of drought of a year, with a large part of the region in a “moderate” or “severe” drought, as classified by the American drought instructor, which releases color coded weekly cards to show the extent and intensity of drought on a national scale.

Unusually dry conditions have dropped the water levels of Lake Corpus Christi.

“We did not have enough rain to reconstruct the lakes and tanks in southern Texas,” said Davis, adding that several smaller cities and communities in the region must now look for emergency solutions.

Davis said the current projections suggest that the lake levels could be too low in late December. As such, the city is trying to dig two emergency wells to continue drinking water flowing in Mathis.

The project has not yet inaugurated, but Davis said that it hoped to accelerate the authorization process and the rental agreement with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. If everything goes as planned, the excavation could start by the end of October, he said.

“If everything corresponds and we can bring the wells by the end of December, everything will be fine,” said Davis.

However, city officials are considering other safeguarding measures in case, including costly desalination factories and the possibility of treating and reusing wastewater.

“We do not leave any stone not returned,” said Davis.