Environmental regulators in Texas issued an emergency order on Tuesday evening suspending requirements for the drought-stricken city of Corpus Christi to release water from its reservoir system in support of coastal wetlands.
On the same day, Corpus Christi lifted restrictions on watering lawns that had been in place since 2024, when its reservoirs remained below critical levels until a dramatic rebound in July.
“The city has chosen lawns over the bay,” said Larry McKinney, a former senior director of aquatic resources for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who lives in Corpus Christi. “Without freshwater inflows, the bay becomes basically a giant sewage treatment pond.”
The emergency suspension of requirements for environmental flows is the latest episode in a fight over water that has consumed Corpus Christ, an industrial hub on the semi-arid South Texas coast, during years of intensifying drought.
Corpus Christi hasn’t released water into the Nueces River Delta and Nueces Bay since 2024 while its reservoirs remained below 30 percent full, the trigger point for environmental flows established in a 2001 administrative order by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Epic rainfall in July refilled the Nueces River reservoirs above 40 percent, but Corpus Christi delayed releasing water and requested a suspension of the rule.
“Without emergency relief, Applicants could be required to release as much as [11.9 billion gallons] of inflows,” the city wrote.
The TCEQ granted Corpus Christi’s request on Tuesday, suggesting that the region’s water crisis isn’t over yet.
“Although the reservoir system is above recent lows, long-term data and weather forecasts suggest a return to critical levels is foreseeable,” wrote TCEQ Executive Director Kelly Keel in the Aug. 25 emergency order. “The region is not expected to experience relief from persistent drought conditions and drought conditions are expected to worsen.”
If below-average rainfall continues, reservoirs could fall back below 30 percent in April next year, said Corpus Christi Water Chief Operating Officer Nick Winkelmann in a presentation to City Council on Tuesday.
Regardless, the city opted to lift restrictions limiting automatic sprinkler system use to once weekly, which had been in place since March 2024.
“Why do we have to let the residents suffer? They want to water their grass,” said City Council member Eric Cantu at a City Council meeting last week. “Let them water their grass.”
Lawn watering accounts for nearly half of municipal water consumption in the summertime in Texas, according to the Texas Water Resources Institute at Texas A&M University.
Cantu suggested that restrictions on sprinkler systems were affecting city water sales.
“Let them use the water so we can get paid,” he said.
At the same time, City Council members described environmental water releases as wasteful, foolish and unlikely to provide meaningful impacts to the bay. State Rep. Denise Villalobos has pledged to permanently repeal the requirement for environmental flows.
City officials and the TCEQ have pointed out no evidence of fish kills, marine life depopulation or environmental complaints since the city halted environmental water releases in 2024.
“Let them use the water so we can get paid.”
— Eric Cantu, Corpus Christi City Council member
Kirsten Stansell, executive director of the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, pushed back last week at City Hall.
“The suspension of releases has had an impact on our bay despite what is being said publicly,” Stansell told City Council on Aug. 18. “Since releases were suspended in 2024, salinities in Nueces Bay and the Nueces Delta steadily increased until spring of 2026.”
Salinity is a key factor in the ecosystems of bays and delta systems that form where freshwater rivers meet the sea. The myriad of creatures that use those habitats to lay their eggs depend on the characteristically moderate levels of salt.
Salinity in Nueces Bay is now higher than in the Gulf of Mexico, Stansell said, “far outside the historic range of one of our most important estuary habitats.”
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The ecosystems are accustomed to drought cycles and can handle extended periods of low freshwater inflows, said McKinney, the former director at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He previously led a 10-year research project, commissioned by the state Legislature in the 1980s, to identify freshwater needs for every river delta on the Texas coast.
Later, he spent 17 years as senior director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi and has researched salinity in aquatic systems around the world.
“The bay can hang on for a while,” he said. But sooner or later, irreversible damage will occur.
“I’ve seen it many times, and unfortunately we’re going to repeat it here,” he said.
If the ecosystem dies and its microbes vanish, there will be nothing to digest the large volumes of treated municipal wastewater that Corpus Christi discharges into the bay.
“Then you’re living next to a septic tank, your whole entire city, so that’s where we’re headed,” he said. “They’re creating a problem that will be much more difficult to fix.”
The TCEQ’s emergency order on Tuesday was issued without a hearing. The agency’s three appointed commissioners will consider any changes to the order during a hearing on Sept. 9.
The city of Corpus Christi issued a statement on Tuesday thanking officials for the order.
“The City pursued the temporary suspension as part of its continued efforts to manage available water supplies during ongoing drought conditions,” the statement said. “The City thanks our entire state delegation and partners in Austin for their support and advocacy in advancing this request.”
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Dylan Baddour covers the energy sector and environmental justice in Texas. Born in Houston, he’s worked the business desk at the Houston Chronicle, covered the U.S.-Mexico border for international outlets and reported for several years from Colombia for media like The Washington Post, BBC News and The Atlantic. He also spent two years investigating armed groups in Latin America for the global security department at Facebook before returning to Texas journalism. Baddour holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has lived in Argentina, Kazakhstan and Colombia and speaks fluent Spanish.
