Orange Grove declares disaster to protect drinking-water supply

Orange Grove’s disaster declaration puts the town’s drinking water on emergency footing, with officials racing to keep taps flowing from an aquifer that has served the community for 90 years. The move, adopted Wednesday, April 15, was meant to protect the city’s water future as leaders warned the supply was under clear strain.

City officials had already been tracking the aquifer since June 2025, and the changes intensified after March 19, when the system posted its largest drawdown, a 17-foot drop. City manager Todd Wright said Orange Grove had measured total dissolved solids at 1,140, just below the 1,200 threshold he cited as unsafe for drinking water. He also said the aquifer had fallen to 157 feet below ground level and that salt content had climbed to 1,100 parts per million.

The disaster declaration came after the city council voted April 3 to hire a hydrogeologist and environmental lawyers, a sign that Orange Grove was no longer treating the problem as a routine utility matter. Wright said the city could face a water emergency by summer if conditions continued, a timeline that has sharpened concern for residents who depend on the same groundwater system for everyday use.

Orange Grove and Corpus Christi met April 1 to review aquifer data and agreed to bring in independent hydrogeologists. That meeting centered on whether new groundwater wells in western Nueces County may be affecting local water levels and water quality. Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni urged caution, saying no one in the room was a hydrogeologist.

The dispute underscores a larger fight across Jim Wells County and South Texas, where cities, towns, chemical plants and ranchers are drawing harder on shared groundwater as reservoirs and aquifers come under pressure. The Gulf Coast Aquifer system, which includes the Evangeline and Chicot aquifers, stretches from Louisiana to Mexico, and the Texas Water Development Board says water quality varies by depth and location. For Orange Grove, that regional reality has become a local crisis, with the city now trying to hold onto the source that has kept its drinking water running for generations.