Corpus Christi & TX Officials Have Ignored Global Warming And Worst-Case Drought Scenarios For 30 Years And Counting

[hatrack]

A decade ago, Corpus Christi’s regional water plan projected shortages as soon as 2050. The next plan, released five years later, shortened that timeline to 2030. The next plan, released this year, said shortages were imminent, putting city leaders in a desperate scramble to avoid an emergency. Something’s not right with the calculations that underpin these plans, said John Michael, an engineering executive who has worked on local water infrastructure for 44 years. “Whether it’s climate change or something else, our reservoir system is not as dependable as we once thought,” he said at his office in May.

He pointed to the regional water plans on his office table—700 pages in four-inch binders—which are prepared every five years by local committees using methodology provided by the State of Texas. These plans never factored in climate science or considered the projections that a warming planet could contribute to a drought as extreme as the one Corpus Christi now faces. In fact, as climate models predicted, every drought for the last 30 years in Corpus Christi, has exceeded the parameters contemplated in local plans, thanks to fatal delusions, deep in the heart of Texas’ methodology: Texas doesn’t plan for droughts to get worse.

“The droughts keep getting worse,” said Michael, vice president of Hanson Professional Services in Corpus Christi.Four droughts have punctuated his career, each hotter and drier than the last. Each one left the city scrambling to build out its water plans ahead of schedule. For decades, intensifying droughts consistently outpaced planning efforts until, by the start of this drought, the region ran out of plans. The problem is that methods developed by the Texas Water Development Board, an agency headed by appointees of the governor, use the worst drought conditions on record as a worst-case scenario for the future. “Drought‑of‑record planning is a foundational element of Texas water planning,” said a TWDB spokesperson, Kaci Woodrome. “It provides a consistent, statewide minimum baseline for evaluating water supply reliability.”

The TWDB guides water planning processes for 16 regions in Texas, some of which plan for conditions worse than the drought of record, Woodrome said. It is well known that droughts worse than the drought-of-record can occur, she said. Climate scientists have concluded that the Earth’s warming atmosphere has made droughts worse over the past 25 years and will continue to do so over the next 25. But that isn’t reflected in Texas’ water plans. “Climate-related projections are not something that any of Texas’ state water plans have included,” Woodrome said, referring questions about climate to the Office of the State Climatologist.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25062026/texas-unrealistic-plans-created-corpus-christi-water-crisis/

[surfered]

1. Climate Change cannot be considered or even mentioned in this oil & gas state.

[justaprogressive]

2. See no

evil, hear no evil speak no evil.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. No problem, just go to the store and buy bottled water!

What a bunch of whiners!