Corpus Christi’s fierce and headline-grabbing fight against the effects of a record-breaking drought is part of a pattern of disputes over water supply across Texas history, according to an academic expert.
“When I first started seeing articles about the Corpus Christi situation, I was struck immediately by this sense that sometimes things never change,” said Kenna Archer, an associate professor of history at Angelo State University.
“For much of Texas’ history, the focus was not on developing our water resources out of fear over water scarcity,” Archer told the Caller-Times in early April. “That’s part of why we’re struggling right now — because for so long, water development was geared towards navigation or it was geared towards irrigation, but irrigating cotton fields in the Panhandle, not necessarily thinking about water resources to prop up cities.”
Archer gave a presentation at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in April in which she offered a broad perspective of Texas’ 200-year history of water development, with some ties to some local and contemporary events.
‘Interurban conflicts’
What Archer described as “interurban conflicts” over water development can be found going back as far as the 1840s, when the city of Victoria was “complaining that they’re not getting enough support from the state or different groups to develop their bays and inlets and their passes because all the money is going to Galveston,” Archer said.
“You can look at the 1850s and Corpus is making similar complaints — ‘we are going to have to fund this by ourselves because we are not getting public money, it’s all about Houston, it’s all about Galveston,’” she said. “Even in Galveston, they’re complaining that it’s all Houston.”
Politics are among the challenges in water development, Archer said, and can “manifest in a lot of different ways,” extending state and local levels.
That includes groundwater.
“You are going to have politics at the local level between different communities that are going to prioritize and privilege some projects over other projects,” she said. “You can see this playing out, for example, in the Chicot and Evangeline aquifer projects, where the perception is that some communities will be benefited more than others and so that shapes the support sometimes you have for projects.”
Groundwater, she noted, falls under what is known as the “rule of capture” in Texas — sometimes described, Archer said, as “rule of the biggest pump” or her term, “finders keepers.”
Rule of capture means that property owners own not just the surface land area but also the water beneath the acreage, and may use it without regulation as long as the use is considered beneficial.
Regulation wasn’t available until the late 1940s, with the first groundwater district formed in the Panhandle in 1951, Archer said.
Nueces County currently does not have a groundwater conservation district, although there have been efforts to form one since groundwater well field developments have been pursued in earnest in the county. The now-existing well fields are currently regulated under the Corpus Christi Aquifer Storage and Recovery District.
The Evangeline groundwater project, meanwhile, is to be regulated by the San Patricio Municipal Water District.
Water development
Within the scope of history, Corpus Christi is among cities that had initially focused hydrological development on infrastructure related to shipping and navigation, such as development of the bays, inlets and jetties, Archer said — only later moving on to infrastructure more focused on water supply, such as reservoirs and dams.
Like much of the state, an eye on water resources first emerged after World War II, she said.
Proposals to boost supply in the 1970s ran the gamut, according to Archer — including importing water from Canada or Southern California, and a citizen’s suggestion that nuclear bombs be employed to develop reservoirs.
The disputes over water reflects the awareness of water’s importance, she said.
“We become really invested in our water resources, partly because it’s something we take for granted until it’s no longer there,” Archer said.
Kirsten Crow covers city government and water news. Have a story idea? Contact her at kirsten.crow@caller.com.
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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: History of water in Texas sheds light on Corpus Christi crisis
Reporting by Kirsten Crow, Corpus Christi Caller Times / Corpus Christi Caller Times
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