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CORPUS CHRISTI (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – Corpus Christi City Council is set to discuss Tuesday whether to revive a controversial and ambitious endeavor to build a desalination plant to convert seawater into drinkable water — a project the council rejected nine months ago over high costs and environmental concerns.

A stubborn drought and rising demand has left the city strapped for water, but the coastal community is still divided on whether an expensive plant is worth the cost to taxpayers and the local ecosystem.

Desalination removes salt and other minerals from seawater or salty groundwater, but plants are expensive to build and require lots of energy to run.

The city’s water department, the mayor and some City Council members view the proposed plant, the Inner Harbor Desalination Project, as the key to a long-term, steady water supply. City Manager Peter Zanoni often calls it a “drought-proof” solution capable of producing up to 30 million gallons of drinking water a day.

If approved Tuesday, the earliest the facility would deliver water is late 2029, too far away to help the city dodge its immediate emergency needs. According to projections, the city is expecting to impose emergency water restrictions in December, when demand is expected to exceed supplies in six months, though recent rain may push restrictions back into early 2027.

Mayor Paulette Guajardo, a strong supporter of the project, said the city needs to think long-term. “At the blink of an eye, three years will be here,” she said.

The facility is estimated to cost $978.8 million, which the water department said is a “guaranteed maximum price.” That’s about 25% cheaper than previous cost estimates.

The water department has already corralled a number of contractors to jump on the plant, which would be built along the bay in Hillcrest, a historically Black neighborhood. It’s fully permitted and about 60% designed. The soonest it would deliver water, if approved Tuesday, would be late 2029.

Climbing costs played a big role in the City Council’s September decision to abandon the original plan, but critics are also concerned about where the plant’s salty leftovers would be released. Under the proposal under consideration Tuesday, millions of gallons of the brine byproduct — which can be twice as salty as seawater — would be discharged into Corpus Christi Bay, home to a variety of fish, crabs and seagrass.

The city hired a consultant, Spheros Environmental Group, to review the Inner Harbor project’s ecological impact on the bay. The report, finalized last week, concluded that the plant would not disrupt the bay’s ecosystem, Zanoni said.

That report follows a 2020 study evaluating the city’s original desalination project by Freese and Nichols, an engineering consulting firm based in Houston, which found that sea creatures living in the bay can tolerate high salt conditions, and that the proposed plant’s discharge would not surpass that threshold.

But Isabel Araiza, co-founder of the citizens group For the Greater Good, is not convinced.

“It just makes sense in a practically closed-based system, you don’t dump 54 million gallons of brine and sludge into the bay every single day and not expect that to destroy the bay,” Araiza said.

She’s asking city leaders to instead focus on forcing the region’s largest water users — oil refineries and petrochemical plants — to conserve water. Over the past decade, Corpus Christi aggressively courted large industrial facilities that require large amounts of water, promising a sufficient supply.

Now, the city’s main reservoirs have shriveled up, threatening 25% water cuts for all city customers that could begin in December or early 2027. City leaders on Tuesday also will discuss how those restrictions would be implemented, and how high surcharge rates would be, if a Level 1 emergency is triggered — the point when the city is six months away from supply falling short of demand.

Araiza said the proposed desalination plant is “not a sustainable solution economically or environmentally, it’s an industrial want,” and that “the right moral and ethical choice” is to reject it again.

But some community members view the desalination plant as the city’s last lifeline.

Nelda Martinez, who lives along the bay, pleaded with City Council members to move forward with the Inner Harbor project.

“People that you serve are worried if they’re going to have their job tomorrow,” she said during a March meeting. “There have been businesses that have shut down. There have been businesses that now are planning their exit plans. There are people and entities that have decided that they’re not going to move here.”

Ginny Cross, vice president of advocacy for United Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, said she hopes city leaders move forward with a desalination plant because an evergreen water source could save businesses from threats of future surcharges. Mandatory restrictions would be especially hard on car washes and landscaping companies, she said.

“We obviously want our public officials to be good stewards of our tax dollars, but I fear that the days of plentiful, inexpensive water are gone,” Cross said. “I hate that reality for everybody, but I think we’re either going to have expensive plentiful water, or expensive scarce water. I think if we’re going to pay for it, we’d rather have lots of it.”

The city is also considering two desalination plant proposals from private companies. In March, the City Council agreed to hear a plan from Aquatech, a desalination company offering to finish building a water plant for plastics manufacturer Corpus Christi Polymers if the city agrees to purchase water from it.

City representatives also are in talks with AXE H2O, a 2-month-old Houston company that is offering to fully fund and build a desalination facility in the Coastal Bend area. Before work could begin, the city would have to commit to buying at least 50 million gallons a day for at least 30 years.

Kenneth Dees, a water resources engineer based in Fort Worth, said Corpus Christi and the rest of the state should start preparing to shell out more for water, including desalination plants, as the drought deepens and infrastructure ages.

“We’re not running out of water, we’re running out of cheap water,” Dees said.

The original article for this story appears here.

FORT WORTH (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) — Republicans Michael Burgess and Joe Barton, former congressmen who represented North Texas in Washington, are alike in their support of Sen. John Cornyn.

They both endorsed the longtime Republican senator for a fifth term. They both saw him lose Tuesday night, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton soundly won his runoff against Cornyn, an endorsement from President Donald Trump in tow.

But, Wednesday morning — after assessing the wreckage of a scathing primary season that fractured the state’s Republicans — the two men have reached different conclusions about their plans for the Nov. 3 general election, when Paxton will face Democratic nominee James Talarico.

“I do not plan to vote for Ken Paxton,” said Burgess, who now lives in Aubrey, after representing Congressional District 26 from 2003 to 2025.

He said the solution isn’t voting for Talarico.

“I may write John Cornyn’s name in,” he said. “I may write my name in. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
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But supporting Paxton?

“Just morally, it’s something I cannot bring myself to do,” he said.

Barton will.

“There is no way on God’s green earth I’m going to turn around and vote for the Democratic candidate,” said Barton, who has known Cornyn for years, having represented Congressional District 6 for more than three decades before retiring in 2019. Barton even put a sign in his front yard supporting his former colleague’s bid, he said.

There’s always the option to sit out altogether, but that’s a nonstarter for the former congressman.

“You could say, ‘I just won’t vote,’ but that’s not fair because you have an obligation,” Barton said. “Democracy eventually narrows things down to two candidates, and if you participate, you participate, and I will support Paxton.”

Many Republicans across the state are weighing the same question of what to do come November.

The run up to Tuesday was bruising as Cornyn went on the attack, going after Paxton’s personal and professional troubles that have loomed over his political career.

The attorney general has faced allegations of securities fraud, bribery, corruption and infidelity, but has come out largely unscathed. Meanwhile, he’s garnered a reputation as a conservative champion in the courtroom and a loyal friend to Trump and the MAGA movement.

Facing fears of a torn-apart party and an expensive fight ahead, there have been early calls for unity within the GOP, as the national party tries to keep its grip on the Senate in November and as Texas Republicans worry about keeping statewide and legislative seats red in what could be a vulnerable, midterm election cycle.

Republican U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Flower Mound told Paxton’s election night watch party attendees that they need to unify unless they’re ready to see Talarico in Washington.

“Now we’re at a point where it’s the Reds versus the Blues, it’s shirts and skins,” Gill said. “Now it’s time for Republicans to come together to unite to make sure that we send a Republican, Ken Paxton, to the Senate.”

Republican state Rep. Mitch Little was one of the most outspoken Paxton supporters during the primary election. Before being elected to represent part of Denton County in 2024, Little’s claim to political fame was as Paxton’s defense attorney in the impeachment trial.

He said Paxton is no stranger to garnering party support after a heated primary. In 2022, Paxton went head-to-head with challenger George P. Bush in a primary runoff for his seat as attorney general. After clinching the 2022 win, Paxton quickly turned to torn Republicans asking for alliance.

The same demand was a cornerstone of Paxton’s victory speech. He also gave a short statement of thanks to Cornyn for his years of service.

“Tonight is not the end of a campaign,” Paxton told supporters. “Tonight is the beginning of the fight to preserve every value we hold dear. The future of Texas and the future of America is on the line, and I intend to do everything I can to expand our movement. I won three statewide elections, because I know how critical it is for our party to come together, and that’s what we must do now.”

Little said politicians have to master the art of keeping short accounts.

“Once you’re in politics, you don’t tend to forget things like that,” Little said. “You know who ran the ugly ads and had negative things to say about you, but you have to put that in its proper compartment and just realize that the state of Texas is more important than any of those, any kind of personal grudge that you might hold.”

Cornyn didn’t mention Paxton by name in an election night speech, but did say he’d support the Republican ticket in the general election.

Burgess repurposed a quote from Trump as he reflected on Wednesday’s losing outcome for Cornyn.

“I’m not happy,” he said.

The president endorsed Paxton in the final days of the runoff, bucking Senate leadership’s preference of a Cornyn-Talarico ballot. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and members of the Republican establishment are now beginning to build bridges with Paxton in the wake of his decisive victory, Axios reports.

To Burgess, it seems, too many bridges have been burned to win over Cornyn voters like him.

“I don’t know how you make up that ground over the five months ahead … given just the amount of turmoil that’s going to be present in the electorate,” Burgess said.

Paty Hardy, a former State Board of Education member who endorsed Cornyn, has moderate Republican friends saying they won’t vote in the general election.

She has her reservations with Paxton — his character and her impression that he’s arrogant — but she won’t be joining her friends in staying on the sidelines. Cornyn has more of a “gentleman persona,” Hardy said.

“It probably was not wise for him to run again, because of the fact that he has been around for so long, but he’s — I just like the guy,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

Paxton wasn’t Hardy’s first pick, but the attorney general aligns with her conservative policy positions on issues like abortion and sports participation for transgender athletes more than Talarico does.

“I probably won’t go door to door or anything like that,” she said with a chuckle.

Cornyn could have been better about standing up to Republicans in the Senate and he and his peers more aggressive on the SAVE America Act, an election bill Paxton made a center point of his runoff bid, Hardy said.

The incumbent’s electability in November against Talarico factored heavily into her endorsement calculus.

Barton, the former congressman who is supporting Paxton going forward after endorsing Cornyn, said Cornyn lost not because he did a bad job — “he did a very good job” — but because voters wanted a change.

You’ve got to give Paxton credit, he said.

“It’s no small task to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator of the stature of John Cornyn,” Barton said.

Paxton is a personable man who is good with people in small settings and will be an effective U.S. senator, Barton said. Asked if he has any lingering reservations he’d like to see Paxton overcome, Barton turned the conversation to Democrats.

“I have great faith in the Democrat Party to expose whatever they consider Mr. Paxton’s flaws to be ad nauseam,” said Barton, who is no stranger to scandal himself.

Paxton’s public divorce on “biblical grounds” was a feature of the primary. In a perfect world, people have a perfect private life and marriage, but that’s very rare, he said. What matters more is how officials conduct themselves in office, their voting record and service to constituents.

“I will not say that your private life does not matter,” Barton said. “I think it does matter, but it is not normally the determining factor.”

For Burgess, the way Paxton “has treated his spouse” is something he “almost can’t get over.”

Weighing whether there’s anything Paxton could do to win over his vote, Burgess replies, “We’ll see.”

“That’s his task for the next five months,” he said.

LONE STAR (KETK) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the results of a months long investigation into child exploitation on Friday, including the arrest of one East Texas man for possession of child pornography.

Operation Soteria Shield was conducted in the months of March and April with the goal of finding “offenders who exploit children through online platforms, social media, messaging applications, and other digital environments.”

In that time, the FBI’s Dallas field office cooperated with over 90 Texas law enforcement agencies to arrest 276 people, reportedly rescuing 89 children in the process. Operation Soteria Shield arrived in East Texas when the Lone Star Police Department was assigned a cybertip.

The cybertip was from the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. The tip claimed a person living near Lone Star in Morris County was using the X artificial intelligence platform “Grok” to generate “life like images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”

On March 27, Lone Star Police Department officers, Morris County Sheriff’s Office deputies , Ore City Police Department officers, Mt. Pleasant Police Department officers, Hawk Cove Police Department officers and FBI agents took Jesus Aleman Jr. into custody in connection to the cybertip.

According to Lonestar PD, Aleman admitted to having CSAM on his phone at his Morris County residence. After Aleman was arrested on a warrant for possession of child pornography, officers got a search warrant for his phone, which was found to contain over a thousand CSAM images.

“The men and women of East Texas Law Enforcement want all abusers and exploiters of children to know that the internet that was once your playground is now our hunting ground and you can no longer hide on the net,” Lone Star PD said on Friday.

Aleman was a registered sex offender from a previous conviction, meaning his case is being forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution, according to Lone Star PD.

“Operation Soteria Shield brought together over 90 agencies from across the state of Texas,” FBI Dallas special agent in charge R. Joseph Rothrock said. “Together, we were able to make a significant impact in the ongoing battle against predators who exploit children in our communities. This would not have been successful without the resolve of each participating agency. The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to prioritize the safety of the most vulnerable members of our communities.”

The operation’s namesake, Soteria, was an ancient Greek pagan goddess who personified safety, salvation and protection from harm.