Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, December 10, 2000

You may have heard that there's a water shortage throughout the state. You've probably already heard that Corpus Christi is in a much better position than the rest of the state because of the Mary Rhodes Pipeline.
   You probably haven't heard that the city is nearing completion of another big water project - repair of the Wesley Seale Dam. The repairs will allow the city to fill Lake Corpus Christi to capacity, next time there's a big enough rain, whenever that is.
   Last summer, the dam's limit was raised from 91 feet to 93.5 feet. And by year's end, it's expected to be raised to its intended 94-foot capacity, said Kevin Stowers, the city's acting assistant director of engineering services.
   Ahead of schedule
   The project is ahead of schedule and the final bill of about $23.7 million is $4 million under budget, Stowers said. All structural work should be done by January and the last crews are expected to leave the site by March, he said.
   The project basically involved filling in the dam's hollow spots with concrete to anchor it more securely. There had been reports that the dam slipped downstream four inches since it was completed in 1958, but Stowers said there's no way of telling if or how much the dam moved downstream because no reliable marker was put in place. The repair project included installation of electronic sensors for that purpose, so sensitive that they notice changes caused by the season or time of day.
   "We now have one of the safest dams in Texas," Stowers said.
   Repairing reputation
   In addition to increasing the city's water supply potential, this project also could increase trust in the city government. The city's credibility suffered in 1997, when the problem with the dam became widely known. That summer, the staff informed the City Council about a problem, described as a bulge.
   That choice of words proved to be one of a series of blunders and unfortunate coincidences. The bulge was really an uneven spot in a spillway at the floor of the dam. But the word "bulge" conjured the scary image of a dam wall bulging to the point of bursting.
   Because of the bulge, the city had to limit Lake Corpus Christi's level at 91 feet, or 77 percent of its normal capacity.
   The timing was bad, at the tail end of a drought, after a huge rain that caused a lot of runoff. The city had to allow a lot of that usable water to run downstream, causing some flooding, instead of filling up the lake.
   No. 1 challenge
   Then it became known that the city staff had been informed about the bulge years earlier. The public's angry reaction was one reason cited for the failure of a $105 million sales tax initiative that year.
   In the aftermath of the dam debacle, the city staff was told that communication had to improve. The staff has been delivering quarterly reports of the dam project's progress at City Council meetings. But those reports don't create quite the sensation that the bulge did in 1997, and so they don't receive a lot of attention.
   Water issues, in general, deserve more attention than they're getting. At a recent water conference in College Station, Jim Norwine, regents' professor of geosciences at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, told the Houston Chronicle that water is "the most singular challenge that Texas has faced since European settlement."
   'Ahead of the curve'
   "I thought about that before I said it," Norwine said last week, "and I don't think I was being hyperbolic."
   Norwine is impressed with the steps that Corpus Christi leaders have taken to secure sufficient water, such as the pipeline and the dam repair. "I must say, the people in Corpus Christi are ahead of the curve, compared to some of the other regions."
   Speaking of other regions, in San Antonio, there are illegal lawn-watering patrols, and in El Paso, new houses may not be allowed to have front lawns at all.
   Norwine, whose field of expertise is climatology, sees much bigger problems than dry lawns.
   21st century is now
   "I think some people are wondering when will the first water war be fought.
   "It's not too far down the road when we have to decide how viable is irrigation agriculture in the Valley.
   "Think about it. Everyone from where we are, west to the Pacific, is pretty much getting by on borrowed water. They're either sucking it from fossil sources underground or they're mooching it from three- or four-hundred miles away.
   "It's a question in my mind: How sustainable are all those places in the 21st century?"
   The 21st century is now - or less than three weeks from now, depending on where you stand on that debate. A little over three years ago, the people at City Hall were looking foolish. Now, to the people of San Antonio and El Paso, they must look like geniuses. A few years hence, will they look like prophets?
  
  

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