CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) - The city of Corpus Christi is set to spend one million dollars this year in an effort to beef up our water supply. The money is to buy up land which sits between Bay City and Lake Texana. It would be for the proposed Garwood pipeline. The city has been working for years to get ready for that big project and now we've got the latest numbers. The Garwood pipeline would run from the Colorado River over to the city's Mary Rhodes pump station at Lake Texana. The Mary Rhodes pipeline supplies over 40 percent of our drinking water. So why all of this sudden activity? Well, there's been at least one oil service company who's asked the city to buy water for fracking. That water would come from our reservoir system which includes Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi. Council okayed a plan earlier this week to ask the TCEQ to allow it to be able to sell some of that lake water in the future for mining purposes. The idea is to lease the lake water to help build that Garwood pipeline which would then supply over 60 percent of our water. The city says there are also several other options still on the table. Assistant city manager Oscar Martinez said, "we're looking at alternatives it could be those rights should be first perfected by building a pipeline or there's other options, we could lease those water rights for a period of time and make some money off that and re-invest that back into future water supplies so we continue to look into all avenues." Officials say that any deal to sell lake water will be decided by city council and drought conditions are going to play a big role in that decision.
