Another small Coastal Bend community is sounding the alarm that its water supply is under threat as Corpus Christi accelerates its efforts to stave off a pending water catastrophe.
Late Monday, March 30, officials in Orange Grove, located 35 miles west of Corpus Christi, announced that the city has observed a sharp decline in both water level and quality in its sole source of water, the Evangeline/Goliad Sands Aquifer. The “rapid changes” are now threatening to make water in Orange Grove — a tiny Jim Wells County town of about 1,200 people — unsafe to drink. And the city says those changes are a direct result of activities happening in the neighboring county.
“Recent large-scale groundwater pumping in rural Nueces County has coincided with measurable changes in both water levels and water quality within Orange Grove’s municipal system,” city officials said in a news release on Monday…