What You Didn’t Have On Your Bingo Disaster Card

 Corpus Christi, Texas running out of water next year. For real:

The imminent depletion of water supplies in Corpus Christi threatens to cut off the flow of jet fuel to Texas airports and other oil exports from one of the nation’s largest petroleum ports, triggering potential shockwaves through energy markets in Texas and beyond.

Without significant rainfall, Corpus Christi is headed for a “water emergency” within months and total depletion of the system next year, according to the city’s website. “The impacts are going to be felt tremendously through the state, if not internationally,” said Sean Strawbridge, former CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, the nation’s top port for crude oil exports, in a 40-minute interview Thursday. “This should be no surprise to anybody. We were talking about this over a decade ago.”

Other current and former officials, alarmed at what they call a lack of preparations, have suggested the potential for an economic crisis involving mass layoffs, disruption of fuel supplies and billions of dollars in emergency spending to avoid an evacuation of the city.

It's like this:

The region’s largest industrial users, which collectively consume the majority of the region’s water, remain exempt from emergency curtailment. These multi-billion-dollar refineries, petrochemical plants and liquified natural gas facilities are built to run at a steady rate and can’t simply throttle down production in accordance with water availability. They consume large volumes of water primarily in cooling towers to prevent excessive heating and explosions.

Which probably means:

Depletion of this region’s reservoirs would lead to “controlled depression” for the local economy, “mass unemployment” and “industrial total shutdown,” according to a two-page report by Don Roach, former assistant general manager of the San Patricio Municipal Water District, which supplies many of the region’s large industrial water users.

That includes refineries operated by Flint Hills Resources, Valero and Citgo that provide jet fuel to Texas airports and meet much of the state’s daily demand for gasoline.

“This waiting disaster is under the radar for the rest of the state,” said Roach, who worked 20 years at the water district and retired in 2014. “We hear nothing from the Texas politicians about the seriousness of the situation or any state plan to mitigate it.”

He no longer had access to current water data and contracts, he stressed, but produced the report based on his own knowledge. It said the costs of trucking in emergency water “would bankrupt many local small businesses and low-income households” while state emergency managers would need billions of dollars to “build emergency temporary pipelines or subsidize desalination barge rentals to prevent a total evacuation of the city.” Strawbridge, a former director of the Port of Long Beach, said Roach’s assessment was “spot on.”

And what does the region need?

The last hope to avert disaster, the official said, was a 20- to 30-inch rainfall.

“It would basically have to be a hurricane,” he said.

To put that in perspective, Houston go 50+ inches of rain during Harvey. And since then we’ve had to restrict water usage from time to time, because of drought. If a hurricane is your last hope, you’re really screwed. Especially when a hurricane would just be a stop gap measure.

Nothin’ but good times ahead!