(This story was updated to add new information.)
More than a month after design for the Inner Harbor desalination plant screeched to a halt, there remains confusion over the project’s status.
Is Inner Harbor desal ostensibly dead — or is it merely a plan in limbo?
The Corpus Christi City Council revived the debate after a water project update Oct. 14.
This map shows the approximate locations of the proposed Inner Harbor seawater desalination plant’s intake and discharge points.
The contentious discussion kicked off after City Councilman Everett Roy noted the absence of the proposed plant in the presentation.
It — along with alternative projects, such as drilling groundwater wells — had appeared in nearly each of the weekly updates.
“I’ve had people ask me, what did we officially do as a council, in terms of where we’re at with the Inner Harbor,” Roy said.
“If we’re going to proceed with looking at (another contractor) or looking at whatever the alternative is, then that’s one thing,” he added. “If we’re not proceeding, I think that the people deserve to know that.”
Although the council voted against continuing the contract with Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. for design of the plant, there has not been a formal vote nixing the project altogether.
Some council members contended that the vote to end the contract with Kiewit was effectively a vote to terminate the project as well.
In a workshop earlier this month, staff presented the council with a series of options that could be pursued for the project, including the possibility of taking up talks with the second-highest ranking design-builder, Acciona/Mastec.
Because the most recent discussion had been in a workshop format instead of a council meeting, there was no vote.
The Inner Harbor project remains on the table, said Mayor Paulette Guajardo, describing the omission of the plant from the water supply update presentation as “disingenuous.”
Some council members have expressed varying degrees of interest in pursuing the project under different avenues.
The council as a whole has not specifically eliminated the plant as an option to boost water supply, Guajardo said.
“We need to decide,” she said. “That decision has not been made.”
The vote to not supplement funding for Kiewit to continue design past the 30% completion mark was 6-3.
City Council members Sylvia Campos, Carolyn Vaughn, Eric Cantu, Gil Hernandez, Kaylynn Paxson and Roy supported withholding additional funding, with Guajardo and City Councilmen Mark Scott and Roland Barrera voting in dissent.
Paxson on Oct. 14 described frustration in continuing “to come back to something that we have moved past.”
At one point, she directly addressed Guajardo, stating that there was a need “to be cognizant of how we’re going to lead the people forward.”
That means making “sure that we are leading them with confidence and not taking them backwards into things that are going to bring back up confusion, uncertainty,” she said.
In two letters, the Texas Water Development Board has said low-interest financing that had been earmarked for the Inner Harbor desalination plant could not be transferred to another water supply project.
However, city officials submitted another letter to the state agency on Oct. 13 asking if the loans could be repurposed to a different water supply project, said City Manager Peter Zanoni.
One of the projects in the council’s consideration is known as the Evangeline groundwater project, which proposes to pump groundwater from a well field near Sinton.
Should the project be executed as planned, it would augment Corpus Christi’s water supply by as much as 24 million gallons of water per day.
Staff doesn’t expect a response from TWDB for as long as two months, Zanoni said, advising that it would be better to potentially return to discussion on the Inner Harbor project after receipt of the state’s response.
There’s a need for the state agency to provide an “answer to that question,” Guajardo said.
But, she added, “it’s probably going to come back as what it has multiple times.”
Cantu suggested a shorter process to decide the fate of the Inner Harbor project.
“I think we should bring it back to the council next week and get it over and done with, and it’s voted up or down,” he said.
Officials in the past had estimated the plant would come online in 2028.
“This project is not going to save our a—–, it’s not going to save us,” Cantu said. “We need to find water today, tomorrow.”
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Is desal dead? Disagreement continues among City Council members