THREE RIVERS, Texas — The future of water access from the Choke Canyon Reservoir is creating tension between Three Rivers and Corpus Christi.
As we've reported, the two entities have spoken out over water access.
On Tuesday, March 24, Three Rivers released the following statement below.
KRIS 6 News reached out to Corpus Christi officials, who say they will schedule a meeting in the upcoming weeks with Three Rivers officials to sort out the confusion. Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said Three Rivers may have misread data, assuming the water supply would last until 2027.
"From my sitting down with the city administrator - I think that they were in reading that graph. In looking at that they assumed that everything would be fine," Zanoni said.
Zanoni emphasized that Three Rivers is not a customer of Corpus Christi Water. According to Zanoni, Three Rivers uses about 3 million gallons of water daily of the 21 million gallons released from the dam.
"Three Rivers has a historic run of the river rights. That equates to two percent of all the volume of Choke Canyon," Zanoni said.
"They should not be relying on Corpus Christi or Corpus Christi water for data to run their business. Because they run their own business, they should have their own data analytics. They should have a good understanding of how much water there is in the reservoir because they own a two percent rate," Zanoni said.
Despite the tension, Corpus Christi officials say they are still willing to work with Three Rivers and other communities.
KRIS 6 News stopped at Three Rivers City Hall to speak with the city manager and mayor, but could not get in touch with them. We also reached out by phone and did not receive an answer as of Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, residents say responsibility may fall on both sides, noting that warning signs are not new as water levels continue to drop.
"As a business owner, it’s scary," said Colton Brown. "I really hope Three Rivers has a plan. I really hope they’ve been thinking about this for a while now. They knew it was coming. Even though it’s early - they knew it was gonna happen. I feel like they should have something ready."
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