Corpus Christi, TX Water Use Rules: Leak Reporting Duty (2026)

Under Sec. 55-100(b), the city computes one-family residential wastewater charges on a "winter quarter average usage" figure built from actual water consumption during December, January and February. The city adds the customer's water use across those three winter months, divides by the number of days between the December and March readings to get an average daily usage, then multiplies by thirty. The resulting winter quarter average usage is capped at a maximum of twenty-five thousand (25,000) gallons regardless of how much water was actually used, and it is recalculated by May 1 every year and applied to bills from that date forward.

Because the wastewater charge tracks water use rather than actual sewer flow, a hidden leak inside the plumbing system during the winter quarter can permanently inflate a household's billing baseline for the following year unless the customer intervenes. Sec. 4 addresses that scenario directly: when a customer's water or wastewater usage jumps substantially because of hidden leaks in the plumbing system during the winter quarter average charge period, the customer may ask the director of water utilities, or the director's designee, to adjust the wastewater bill, but only after producing proof the leak was repaired.

The adjustment is discretionary, phrased as "may adjust," not automatic, and the code sets no separate mechanism for a matching adjustment on the water-usage side of the bill; relief runs through the wastewater charge that the winter quarter average drives. New customers who have not yet established a winter quarter average are billed instead at the city's "interim average" rate under subsection (b)(1)c, and that interim rate is not subject to this same leak-repair adjustment language. The rule sits inside article on wastewater rates administered by Corpus Christi Water, the same office that runs the drought-stage water use restrictions and surcharges found later in chapter 55.