CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Corpus Christi is looking at spending upwards of $100 million on making improvements to the Mary Rhodes Pipeline. A recent study revealed that the pipeline has several weak points that have caused breaks and not allowed the city to capture all the water it's paying for each year.
The 101-mile stretch of water piping cost $116 million back in 1998. The discovered weak points have caused the entire pipeline to only handle 55 percent of the water it can hold.
"We've paid for water that we're not taking everyday because of the pipe's strength and structural integrity," City Manager Peter Zanoni said.
Council is set to hear a briefing on the study at Tuesday's council meeting. If council eventually signs off on the proposal it would cost residential water customers about a dollar more a month on their utility bill.
It's the quickest and perhaps cheapest way to get more water to the city as officials believe the proposed improvements to the pipeline could get us another 20 million gallons of water a day.
That would be about one-fifth of our total water used on a typical summer day.
Zanoni was reviewing the staff's presentation for the council meeting when 3NEWS showed up asking questions about the $3.2 million study.
"The pressure is only at 100 PSI of pressure, but it should be more like 125 or 150 in those areas where we have a concern where the blowouts have been," Zanoni said.
The city has a plan to get more water in the pipe which will cost around the same amount it did for the entire original project.
"Certainly the concept is we need some parallel lines to ensure we get all of our water down the Mary Rhodes Pipeline." COO for Corpus Christi Water Drew Molly said.
In other words, bypasses will be used to strengthen the overall structure so more water can flow into the O.N. Stevens Water treatment plant. However, council still has to approve this entire plan, one that could take anywhere from 24 to 40 months to complete.
The earliest we could see more of that water flowing this direction is in either 2026 or 2027.