Corpus Christi official urges Sinton to reengage on Evangeline water project

Ryan Skrobarczyk, director of intergovernmental relations for the City of Corpus Christi, urged the Sinton City Council on Feb. 17 to reengage in direct city-to-city talks over the Evangeline water project and an interlocal agreement that Corpus Christi has offered to Sinton and the St. Paul Water Supply Corporation.

Skrobarczyk told the council Corpus Christi approved an interlocal agreement in October offering "a free emergency interconnection, free well- mitigation, and free water in the event of an emergency," and said the city submitted an operations and mitigation plan to the San Patricio Groundwater Conservation District. He said the Evangeline Project conveys a water right on about 23,000 acres in San Patricio County and emphasized urgency: delays, he said, threaten a timeline to bring the resource online by November to help roughly half a million people across seven counties facing drought conditions.

The request matters to Sinton because the plan would affect regional supplies and emergency reliability for communities in San Patricio County and the Coastal Bend. Skrobarczyk framed the proposal as a way to avoid the time and cost of a fully contested hearing and to allow cooperating cities to share the resource relatively quickly.

City Manager John Hobson told the council that an agreement is "in progress," that staff will review the initial draft internally at a meeting the following day to identify additions, and that he expected to be ready to meet with Corpus Christi "by the end of this week or next." The council did not take formal action on the request during the Feb. 17 meeting.

The matter is now at the staff-review stage; the next procedural step Hobson described is an internal staff review followed by a city-to-city meeting to discuss terms and operational details.