Recent News
The City Council will vote on Inner Harbor desalination on Tuesday, June 2!
Corpus Christi wants to spend $1 billion of YOUR money on desalination in the Bay!
But the water's not for you.
Corpus Christi is in a water crisis, but it’s not the one you may think.
Our community didn't run out of water – City Hall “leaders” sold most of our water to a handful of giant refineries and petrochemical plants before they actually had any water to sell. Industrial users now consume 60% or more of the Coastal Bend's water supply, while residents use an ever-smaller share.
But that’s not stopping City Hall from scheming to take $1 billion of YOUR money to make good on their promises to industry.
The proposed Inner Harbor seawater desalination plant isn't needed by residents or local businesses, but has been City Hall’s obsessive focus for years. Mayor Paulette Guajardo and City Manager Peter Zanoni continue to push the project despite the enormous cost to residential ratepayers, serious risks to the environment and public health, and strong community opposition, including from a majority of City Council members who already voted to discontinue funding the project last year.
So exactly how much would the Inner Harbor plant cost ratepayers?
The mayor nonetheless plans to force the City Council to vote on the project again, but this time following over $1 billion in investments already made in alternative water projects to address our immediate supply crisis. These projects alone will increase residential water rates by roughly 80%. Adding the Inner Harbor plant to ratepayers’ bills would bump the total eventual increase to 115% or more!
Inner Harbor desalination is corporate welfare, plain and simple.
It’s clear that the Inner Harbor desalination plant is for refineries, not residents – but City Hall wants YOU to pay the $1 billion bill anyway. If you disagree with their plan, sign our petition now and then make your voice heard on Tuesday, June 2! Tell the City Council to END the DESAL DISASTER once and for all!
Community Groups Warn of “Forever Chemicals” Contamination in Inner Harbor
A coalition of ten local environmental and neighborhood organizations has issued a formal memorandum to City and Port officials warning of toxic PFAS contamination in Corpus Christi’s Inner Harbor. The groups are calling for independent testing and an immediate pause on the City’s proposed Inner Harbor desalination plant until the risks are understood and protection of public health is guaranteed.
OUR BILLS GO UP, OUR BAY GOES DOWN.
Marine scientists are warning that the Inner Harbor desalination plant’s daily discharge of 50 million gallons of hyper-saline wastewater into our shallow, semi-enclosed bay system could create oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that suffocate fish, shrimp, crabs, and the aquatic life the Coastal Bend’s $1.5 billion tourism economy depends on. The City has undertaken but not completed a comprehensive far-field study of what the plant’s discharge would actually do to the bay system. Meanwhile Dr. Kristin Nielsen, aquatic toxicologist at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, has called the proposed plant’s discharge location “genuinely shocking.”
As reported in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, a new economic analysis conducted by Autocase concludes that proposed baywater desalination plants are not only the most expensive but also the most environmentally and socially damaging water options available to Corpus Christi.
The new report finds that the total cost of each of the three desalination facilities proposed by the City and Port of Corpus Christi would be roughly double that of tapping into groundwater from the Evangeline Aquifer and expanding water conservation strategies.
The report also reveals that manufacturing, especially petrochemical refining, has driven most of the regional growth in demand for water over the past decade, accounting for nearly 70% of the region’s increase in water use between 2010 and 2020. Growth over the same period for all households, commercial uses, fire protection, public recreation, and sanitation totaled less than 6% altogether.
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Alarmingly, the report shows that the baywater desalination would have potentially devasting environmental and social costs, including impacts to local commercial fisheries resulting from the discharge of brine and increase in salinity levels in the bay system. The report indicates that the impact of baywater desalination plants on just six key fish species could cost the region up to $6 million per year.
The Hillcrest Residents Association has filed a civil rights complaint against the City of Corpus Christi for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act based on the City’s decision to locate a new industrial facility – the Inner Harbor Desalination Plant – in the historically African American Hillcrest neighborhood.
Corpus Christi’s refinery row surrounds Hillcrest residents who have endured decades of segregation followed by environmental racism in the form of refinery pollution, new highways, and disinvestment by governmental entities. As a result, Hillcrest residents have a 15-year lower life expectancy than other parts of Corpus Christi.
Tell the City of Corpus Christi that it's time to stop environmental racism in our town. No desalination in the Hillcrest community! No desalination in the Corpus Christi Bay!
KIII-TV: City Made "Losing Bet" on Desalination
"Regulators and scientists worry that each plant’s discharge of tens of millions of gallons of hyper-salty wastewater per day could disrupt reproductive cycles for a host of aquatic species, which rely on the half-salty waters of the coastal bays for their larvae to mature."
"All together, environmentalists say, the plants’ discharge, coupled with the pollution and ocean freighter traffic from the industrial boom they would unleash, may constitute a near-fatal blow for life in the bay, whose once-teeming ecosystems have nursed coastal communities since long before Corpus Christi existed."