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 \u2014 a project the council rejected nine months ago over high costs and environmental concerns.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Desalination removes salt and other minerals from seawater or salty groundwater, but plants are expensive to build and require lots of energy to run.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s 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 \u201cdrought-proof\u201d solution capable of producing up to 30 million gallons of drinking water a day.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Mayor Paulette Guajardo, a strong supporter of the project, said the city needs to think long-term. \u201cAt the blink of an eye, three years will be here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The facility is estimated to cost $978.8 million, which the water department said is a \u201cguaranteed maximum price.\u201d That\u2019s about 25% cheaper than previous cost estimates.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s fully permitted and about 60% designed. The soonest it would deliver water, if approved Tuesday, would be late 2029.<\/p>\n
Climbing costs played a big role in the City Council\u2019s September decision to abandon the original plan, but critics are also concerned about where the plant\u2019s salty leftovers would be released. Under the proposal under consideration Tuesday, millions of gallons of the brine byproduct \u2014 which can be twice as salty as seawater \u2014 would be discharged into Corpus Christi Bay, home to a variety of fish, crabs and seagrass.<\/p>\n
The city hired a consultant, Spheros Environmental Group, to review the Inner Harbor project\u2019s ecological impact on the bay. The report, finalized last week, concluded that the plant would not disrupt the bay\u2019s ecosystem, Zanoni said.<\/p>\n
That report follows a 2020 study evaluating the city\u2019s 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\u2019s discharge would not surpass that threshold.<\/p>\n
But Isabel Araiza, co-founder of the citizens group For the Greater Good, is not convinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just makes sense in a practically closed-based system, you don\u2019t dump 54 million gallons of brine and sludge into the bay every single day and not expect that to destroy the bay,\u201d Araiza said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s asking city leaders to instead focus on forcing the region\u2019s largest water users \u2014 oil refineries and petrochemical plants \u2014 to conserve water. Over the past decade, Corpus Christi aggressively courted large industrial facilities that require large amounts of water, promising a sufficient supply.<\/p>\n
Now, the city\u2019s 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 \u2014 the point when the city is six months away from supply falling short of demand.<\/p>\n
Araiza said the proposed desalination plant is \u201cnot a sustainable solution economically or environmentally, it\u2019s an industrial want,\u201d and that \u201cthe right moral and ethical choice\u201d is to reject it again.<\/p>\n
But some community members view the desalination plant as the city\u2019s last lifeline.<\/p>\n
Nelda Martinez, who lives along the bay, pleaded with City Council members to move forward with the Inner Harbor project.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople that you serve are worried if they\u2019re going to have their job tomorrow,\u201d she said during a March meeting. \u201cThere 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\u2019re not going to move here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Cross said. \u201cI hate that reality for everybody, but I think we\u2019re either going to have expensive plentiful water, or expensive scarce water. I think if we\u2019re going to pay for it, we\u2019d rather have lots of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not running out of water, we\u2019re running out of cheap water,\u201d Dees said.<\/p>\n
The original article for this story appears here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2014 a project the council rejected nine months ago over high costs and environmental concerns. A stubborn drought and rising demand … Continue reading Corpus Christi reconsiders building a desalination plant leaders rejected last year<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1511666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-02 02:25:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1511666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511689,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511666\/revisions\/1511689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1511666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1511666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1511666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}