A tiny farm town in rural San Patricio County may soon run out of easy access to drinkable water by Christmas thanks to a prolonged and worsening drought that has afflicted its sole water source.
Officials in Mathis, a town of less than 5,000 people located about 36 miles west of Corpus Christi, said the town is within months of being unable to pump water from Lake Corpus Christi, the 21,000-acre, manmade reservoir that serves as the sole supply of freshwater to numerous small towns in the Coastal Bend.
Mathis City Manager Cedric W. Davis Sr. told MySA that the lake’s water levels are just a few months away from falling to the point where the city’s singular intake valve will be drawing in sludge. That’ll not only make it harder to process into drinking water but cause untold damage to Mathis’ water treatment plant…