With Corpus Christi nearing a historic drought, the Lavaca- Navidad River Authority has updated two transfer pumps to help keep one of Corpus Christi’s two reservoirs from emptying.
The average monthly rainfall for Corpus Christi is just shy of 32 inches of rain per month, however, for the last four years, the city has gotten monumentally low rain accumulations and now they are approaching a water emergency. This year, for example, the city has received 26 inches of rain for the entire 2025 year.
According to Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni, the pumps need to run at schedule 4 to move the maximum 70 million gallons per day through the pumps.
“Schedule 4 refers to LNRA’s Pumping Schedule NO. 4 (we have four pumping configurations or schedules) for LNRA’s West Delivery System that moves water into and through the City’s Mary Rhodes Pipeline,” LNRA General Manager Patrick Brozozwski said. “The flow rate of Schedule 4 is around 50,000 gallons per minute or 72 million gallons per day.”
For the last 200 days, the pumps have been moving that much water, and the belief is if the pump continues to run at the same transfer levels, the City of Corpus Christi will be able to stave off the reservoir going dry as they search for alternative solutions to the water shortage, and hope for significant successive rainfalls to help fill the second reservoir.
The City of Corpus Christi is in the process of implementing multiple water supply projects within the City’s water service area aimed at producing additional water supplies to meet water demands in the short-term and are taking the necessary steps to carry out longer-term water supply projects, such as desalination, to improve the region’s overall resiliency to drought conditions.
Zanoni said the Corpus Christi Water Department serves seven counties from their two reservoirs.
The western reservoirs is supplied by water from Lake Mathis and Choke Canyon, are at historic low levels and currently sit at 10 percent capacity.
The City of Corpus Christi has been contracted with LNRA for several decades.
“In 1994, the City of Corpus Christi contracted for a water supply from LNRA and Lake Texana,” Brzozowski said. “Under the terms of the water supply contract, the City pays their proportionate share (based on the volume contracted) of LNRA’s costs to provide the water supply from Lake Texana including the O&M of Lake Texana, debt service for Lake Texana, and 100% of the costs associated with delivering the water supply from Lake Texana to the City’s delivery point at the City’s surface water treatment plant located in Calallen.”
