City presents new water-supply dashboard as drought threatens western reservoirs

Corpus Christi city officials on Tuesday unveiled a new public "water-supply dashboard" designed to show in one place how the city's raw and treated water supplies and demands interact amid an ongoing, multi-year drought.

The dashboard—presented by Corpus Christi Water Chief Operating Officer Drew Molly and hydrology consultant Michael Pinkney of Corollo Engineers—combines reservoir levels, inflows, Mary Rhodes Pipeline deliveries and expected new groundwater well output to project when the city's Western supplies would fall to drought thresholds. Molly said the tool answers community questions such as "When could we run out of water? When will our demands not meet supplies?" and shows the assumptions behind those answers.

Why it matters: Corpus Christi draws from both Western supplies (Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi) and Eastern supplies delivered by the Mary Rhodes Pipeline from the Colorado River/Lake Texana system. With very low inflows into the Nueces watershed, the city faces a scenario in which Western reservoir percentages decline to levels that trigger higher stages of drought restrictions. The dashboard gives officials and the public a clearer, single-source view of that timeline and how new measures—pipeline operations, groundwater wells, or an unusually wet year—would change it.

The presentation and discussion

Molly said the dashboard uses the city's daily lake and delivery accounting, augmented this year to reflect potential future supplies and changing weather, and that he and staff have been working with the National Weather Service and the state climatologist to set realistic forecast windows. Corollo's Pinkney walked council through USGS streamflow data showing long-term declines in watershed inflows: "From 02/2008 to present, you have spent nearly every single year receiving less water than what has been in the historical average," Pinkney said, adding that some gauges now record flows at a fraction of earlier averages.

City staff showed March 2025 usage figures: roughly 96.2 million gallons per day total raw and treated water for the month, with about 59% of raw water supplied from the Mary Rhodes Pipeline, 35% from the Nueces River and the balance from Lake Corpus Christi for that month. Molly emphasized the pipeline's role: schedule 4 pumping is modeled at about 70–79 million gallons per day and that pipeline reliability is a central assumption in projections.

Key takeaways and clarifying details

- Current drought status: Large portions of the Nueces watershed and much of Texas remain in drought; some parts of the watershed have reached…