ALICE, Texas — As of Friday June 10, the City of Alice is under a mild water shortage. This prompted the city to dig into their drought contingency plan, place the city on level one, indicating a voluntary water use restriction.
Alice gets their water from Lake Corpus Christi. You can’t tell from just looking at it, but the lake has lowered, to below 88 feet.
“It’s becoming more and more common," Michael Esparza said, Alice City Manager.
The coastal bend heat feels like it came a bit sooner than usual this year, bringing along another drought in Alice. Something that’s becoming just as expected as the triple digit heat index.
“Alice is a little bit, I guess, dry right now for the most part," David Ramirez said, Alice resident. "We had a little bit of rain a couple of weeks ago. Anything from an inch and a half to three and a half.”
Voluntary water restrictions are now in place for the foreseeable future.
“Big part of that is, two days a week on watering on automatic sprinklers and some other restrictions on using a hose and bibs on the hose end, if they’re going to do some irrigation as well," said Esparza. "But mainly, the conservation side and making people aware that we are in a drought.”
Some residents said they didn’t know about the drought. But Ramirez, is aware and seeing how it affects his neighbors on the countryside.
“It’s still in a stage where it’s kind of hurting some people as far as the farmers and the ranchers,” said Ramirez.
As of Sunday morning, Lake Corpus Christi sits at 87.8 feet. The city is needing to conserve 10 percent a day, which equates to 350,000 gallons.
“It’s only gong down. Without any rain...We’ve got three people pulling from Lake Corpus Christi. Three municipalities. Corpus Christi, of course, is pulling from the Nueces River on the outfall, but Mathis, Beeville and ourselves are all pulling from Lake Corpus Christi,” Esparza said.
To continue to go about daily lives it’s going to take a little conservation from everyone. Ramirez said he’s doing his part with small cutbacks in his home.
“It would have to be like a hopefully, not wishing for a bad hurricane, but something to that extent,” Ramirez said.
“We don’t see any rain coming in the near future so for us this is...We’re looking a big plant here that produces water, but we don’t have any water to put in it. Then we just don’t have any and that’s the predicament we’re in," said Esparza. "That’s why we’re active on the secondary water source that we’re working on.”
As long as the lake stays between 86 feet and 88 feet, Alice will stay in level one. Should the lake fall below 86 feet, those suggestions for conservation become mandatory.
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