CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Rincon Water Supply Corporation in Taft has around 1,600 customers. It's been around for almost 50 years and stretches across much of San Patricio County. However, the nonprofit was only setup to send water to local farmers, not large developers looking to put in 800 homes like they're trying to do over in Odem.
County Judge David Krebs says there's a big sticking point in that project.
"We’ve got subdivision plats that are waiting to come into the county, they’re trying to get water anyway they can and they can’t even get enough water to bring a subdivision in," he said.
"So, the water is not there today based on the capacity of the line," Rincon Water Supply Corporation General Manager Art Smith said.
He said he get his water from the San Patricio County Municipal Water District’s treatment plant off of Highway 361, between Ingleside and Gregory.
Smith showed 3NEWS a map of his distribution area which includes a huge tract of land that sits between Odem and Sinton off Highway 77. One of the largest home builders in the country wants to put over 800 homes on this property. But, Rincon doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to provide that kind of water.
"So, the water is not there today based on the capacity of the line," Smith said.
After all, the nonprofit usually provides a daily average of just half a million gallons a day of water a day for all of its customers.
"There's no room on the existing infrastructure, the infrastructure improvements are paid for by the developers and that's assuming that the water supply is available," he said.
Smith said he and the home builder have weekly discussions. Engineers are designing the system to be put in place so that Rincon will be able to deliver the needed water for the subdivision.
"The developer, ultimately they would pay the dollar amount to have a contractor put the larger line in the ground, build the new pump station that could facilitate the quantity of water," he said. "They need the elevated storage to make sure that the pressures stay good throughout the entire neighborhood at build out."
Smith says this development deal and others that are planned over the next few years could double the size of his operation -- one which had remained steady and under the radar for nearly 50 years.