For Trey Cranford and Kelly Harlan, a recent trip down the Nueces River wasn’t about recreation — it was research. The two are working to establish Nueces County’s first groundwater conservancy, and they believe something is seriously wrong with the water.
Their concern centers on total dissolved solids (TDS), a measurement that reflects salinity and other substances in water. The federal standard for safe drinking water is 500 TDS — but in their tests, the numbers were much higher.
“Two thousand eight hundred seventy-three,” Cranford said, reading the meter. “OK, so five times the standard for drinking water.”…