Corpus Crispy
New Mexico, Texas, Mexico and the withering of the Rio Grande
Welcome readers, both old and new. I fell off my weekly publishing schedule with this one, partly due to the research needed, and partly due to the distraction of the Mad Orange One running our country into the ground. Iran still stands, and a whole civilization did not die as threatened, although this cease fire is hardly call for assurance. Thank you for being with me as I try to keep climate change in our minds as so many worries press on us.
In my last article Leaving Las Vegas, I sketched the plight of the seven basin state’s water crisis, mentioning Texas at the end not as an afterthought, but because it’s not completely sustained by the Colorado River. Texas water sources vary with the Rio Grande supplying South Texas. The Rio Grande is also critical to New Mexico and seven states of northern Mexico, including Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. In total, six million people depend on this river, that like the Colorado is in a state of failure.
Corpus Christi is a city whose wealth is built on oil. Although there is no fracking in the area, the community of 500,000 is still largely dependent on the oil industry (and chemical industry) for its economy. It’s also as you can likely see from the photo above a popular tourist destination. In fact, Visit Corpus Christi claims it to be the 53rd top tourist destination in the world no doubt due in great part to its beaches on the Gulf of Mexico that will sink under rising seawater.
No worries though, Corpus Christi’s real economy lies in Texas oil — from industry defined by refineries, LNG and chemical plants. With refineries for CITGO, Valero and Flint Hills, and chemical manufacturers such as Chemours (fluoroelastomers resins, lubricants, refrigerants and fluoropolymers such as Teflon), LyondellBasell (ethylene and propylene products), and Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, a partnership of Exxon and Saudi Arabia’s SABIC (monoethylene glycol used in plastic food packaging, fabrics and liquid containers, and polyethylene used in packaging, bottles, containers and “mulchable” agricultural film, yum), the petrochemical industry is the real driver of Corpus Christi.
There’s more I could list, but I feel a tumor coming on.
This article isn’t to bitch about oil, chemicals and plastics, though. It’s about drought. Explaining the Texas water situation and that of New Mexico and Mexico is more complex than the basin states. Although the Rio Grande is irreplaceable in south Texas, cities like Corpus Christi, Austin, and San Antonio depend on other imperiled water sources, in some cases the Colorado River, while the basin states are dependent on it entirely.
Corpus Christi water supply
Industrial demand drives more than half of the Corpus Christi region’s water use. In 2024, that Exxon-Saudi alliance used just under 5 billion gallons of water alone.
More than 95 percent of the city’s water supply comes from surface water — lakes and reservoirs. The storage levels of two of the three reservoirs that supply the city, Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir, have fallen to 8.4 percent of capacity as of March 23. The city is on the verge of running out of water.
Fortunately, Governor Greg Abbott has a plan whose wisdom and compassion have been proven by ongoing “Operation Lone Star.” Lone Star has involved entangling desperate brown migrants fleeing abject poverty and life-threatening heat on barbed wire in the Rio Grande. I considered the plight of Mexico City in Will the Revolution Be Televised? Mexico City’s water system and temperatures are in life-threatening crisis.
One woman suffering a miscarriage was caught on the wire in June 2023, and a tiny child, a four-year-old girl passed out due to heat exhaustion as she had tried to cross the barrier, but was pushed back by a kindly Texas National Guard soldier. This is what humanity coming together in times of crisis looks like.
Yeah, in Greg I trust.
The city’s secondary water supply comes from a leak prone 141-mile long pipeline that transports water from Lake Texana fed by the Navidad River. The Navidad River runs through Lavaca County. Corpus Christi (Nueces County) increased the pipeline’s capacity by 24 million gallons per day, and it’s currently working at maximum capacity, delivering about 72 million gallons per day to the region.
However, that desperation lifeline is uncertain.
If the emergency Lake Texana supply falls below 50 percent capacity, that threshold reduces water deliveries rules set by the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority. Of course the real determiner of the rules is Mother Nature ticked about fossil fuel induced heat. The reservoir is nearing that threshold.
Abbott intervened, genius that he is, ordering the threshold be lowered to 40 percent. He’ll simply pump more of the rapidly evaporating life-sustaining resource called water to keep the petrochemical plants spewing heat death alive. Drinking water at the tap, meh. Cooling water for petrochemical plants, of course.
This crisis could cause mass layoffs, disruption of fuel supplies, billions of dollars in emergency spending and literally force evacuation of the city. Evacuation would result in climate refugees, that’s right in the good old USA. Twenty years on, we still have them from Hurricane Katrina. Ironically, Texas took many of those victims in. What changed? Mother Nature doesn’t give a crap about American “exceptionalism.”
Understanding Texas water supply
San Antonio region
Texas’s water supply comes from two main sources, 54 percent groundwater (aquifers), and 43 percent surface water (lakes, rivers and reservoirs). Texas relies on nine major aquifers and 22 minor ones.
The vast Ogallala Aquifer runs underneath the Panhandle and west Texas. It’s the lifeline for farms and ranches in the Texas High Plains and is the one of the largest aquifers in the world, shared with six other states including Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. However, overuse is rapidly depleting it. Depended on for irrigating a Texas region that supplies $20 billion worth of food — one fifth of the total annual US agricultural harvest — the importance of Ogallala can’t be overstated.
Ogallala Aquifer
Another rapidly depleting water source is the Edwards Aquifer, which provides water to San Antonio, the seventh-largest city in the US and the surrounding Hill Country. San Antonio is actually sinking from the overpumping of groundwater. The largest groundwater system in Central Texas was declared in “unprecedented territory,” 40 feet lower than normal starting 2025. The article above from San Antonio Express News is paywalled, but appears to work once before it’s blocked.
Texas also relies on water from 15 major river basins and eight coastal basins, lakes, and more than 180 man-made reservoirs. Major surface water sources include the Rio Grande, Colorado River, and reservoirs like Lake Travis in Austin and Toledo Bend in East Texas.
Understanding Texas water supply
Austin region
Austin’s water supply is primarily dependent on Lake Austin and Lake Travis, both fed by the lower Colorado River. As such, they are both vulnerable to the Colorado’s tapping out status. Lake Austin is principally fed by the outflow of Lake Travis.
Lake Austin is maintained by releases of water from Lake Travis upstream. Other Texas Highland Lake reservoirs on the Colorado River include Lake Buchanan, Inks Lake, Lake LBJ and Lake Marble Falls.
In 2025, Lake Travis reached its highest water levels in three years, jumping 20 feet in four days of torrential downpours. At the time the lake was only 43 percent full. The storms characteristic of global warming extreme weather events was hardly all good news however. The floods resulted in the tragedy of Camp Mystic for girls in which 27 campers and counselors died.
Today, current Lake Travis water levels are about 663 feet, about 17 feet below full, not at crisis level, but certainly not to be taken for granted in a region gripped by historic, extreme drought.
Understanding New Mexico and south Texas water supply
The plight of the Rio Grande
The US and Mexico share the Rio Grande under a series of agreements administered by the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Rio Grande headwaters start in the southern Rockies, the San Juan Mountains of Colorado 12,588 feet above sea level. The river flows approximately 1,900 miles depending on its shifting course, running through New Mexico, defines the western border of Texas and ends in the Gulf. The river is the lifeblood of communities as diverse as Albuquerque, NM, population around 558,000 (greater area close to one million) and at least a dozen ancient Pueblos that survived colonialism. It’s a critical water source for south Texas as well and provides water and life to approximately six million people.
The river’s final destination and outlet is the Gulf of Mexico, if it can continue to get there.
The river is “governed,” by the Rio Grande Compact an agreement between Texas and New Mexico. The Rio Grande Project consisting of numerous dams, canals, drainage channels and a hydroelectric plant was begun in 1905, finally completely implemented in the 1950s. A water treaty was signed in 1939.
However, Mother Nature is not impressed with our El Grande schemes.
Nearly 80 percent of the water taken from the river is used for irrigation in both the US and Mexico. This short local news clip shows the dilemma of south Texas farmers forced to pump groundwater in an attempt to grow anything at all. The situation is the same in Albuquerque, with the city forced to pump groundwater — the backup system — now being used as the primary water source. This water does not replenish without snowpack in the Colorado Mountains feeding the Rio Grande.
Corpus Crispy concluding thoughts
This was article was a natural follow up to Leaving Las Vegas, warning of the collapse of the basin states. Texas and New Mexico, dependent on different water sources and infrastructure, demanded a separate analysis. However, they are part of the impending crash of the southwestern states in general. This crisis is not just an economic disaster poised to roll over the country, but a vast human tragedy in the making affecting around 50 million people.
Corpus Christi’s crisis appears to be immediate.
The sheer stupidity of this situation seen coming for decades is breathtaking. No one will be left unaffected. California, the fifth-largest economy on the planet and Texas, both critical to food supplies leave all of us vulnerable. We’re entering a new era in which all we have taken for granted, the very basics — water and food on our tables — is under intense pressure now outside our misguided “control” which has landed us here.
This pressure has been extremely exacerbated by the oligarch fueled regime in office stealing our tax money, dismantling social safety nets and destroying science and environmental protections. The ludicrously stupid gaffe of the Iranian War has expedited a crash that was inevitable regardless. Voting blue won’t save me or you. Both parties have pushed neoliberal economics, refused to understand the limits of the planet, subsidized Big Oil and sold the weapons to Israel enabling a gruesome genocide that the mainstream media sanitizes.
If ever there was a time for revolt, this is it.
Superb detail and explanation, Geoffrey. My long-dead uncle worked as a Civil Engineer for the Dept of the Interior from Amarillo, TX and told the extended family decades ago that the Ogallala Aquifer was being mined and some day it would be depleted. It's easy to imagine that some chemical processing plant could add closed reuse systems (at added cost to their products for sure) but it's hard to imagine any replacement can fix the need for irrigation as drought becomes normalized.
Marc Reisner, in Cadillac Desert, covered this in 1986. He points out that the aquifers were laid down during the last Ice Age, when Canada was covered by an ice sheet and there was perpetual rainfall south of the ice sheet. There were mammoths and mastodons and lions and smilodons and cheetahs and lamas and giant sloths and short faced bears and bison in North America. There was an inland ocean in Utah. Lots of water, lots of grass and trees, lots of megafauna. And it all went away with the ice sheet. The aquifers are the last bit. And it will take another Ice Age to replace them. Which means Canada gets covered by an ice sheet again.
So, do we hope that the collapse of the AMOC starts the return of the glaciers?