Corpus Christi’s City Council voted 6-2 this week to put a citizen-led water pricing measure on the November ballot, setting up a fight that’s expected to land in court well before anyone casts a vote. The proposal, called the Fair Water Amendment, would raise water rates sharply for the city’s largest industrial users, including ExxonMobil, Occidental Chemical and Valero, whenever the region’s reservoirs run low.
The mechanics are specific. Rates for major industrial users would rise 70% once reservoirs drop below 30% capacity, 140% below 20% capacity, and 280% if the city declares a formal water emergency. Community and environmental groups, organized under a group called For the Greater Good with paid canvassers from the Texas Campaign for the Environment, gathered nearly 13,000 signatures from registered voters to force the referendum onto the ballot. “This was a lot of signatures,” Corpus Christi Mayor Pro-tem Kaylynn Paxson said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “This is something that doesn’t happen every day.”
The petition drive grew out of a genuine crisis. Corpus Christi’s main reservoir system fell from 30% full in March 2024 to less than 8% full by May of this year, a stretch severe enough that residents spent 29 months bracing for the city to run out of water entirely. The reservoirs have since rebounded to 42% full after a wet spring and summer, but the political aftershock didn’t recede with the water level. “Something that seemed impossible gave me hope in our democracy,” Miriam Guerra-Rachidy, a member of For the Greater Good, told the council. “It gave me hope in believing that the people can make a difference.”…