Mayor Guajardo announced that City Council will hold a special meeting on April 9 to discuss the acceleration of the Inner Harbor Desalination Project.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo has called a special City Council meeting for April 9 to discuss accelerating approval of the Inner Harbor Seawater Desalination Project as the city faces growing pressure to secure new water supplies during a historic drought.<\/p>\n
Guajardo announced the special meeting Friday, saying the current timeline to bring the desalination contract before City Council needs to move faster.<\/p>\n
\u201cCity staff has a timeline in place that anticipates bringing the desalination contract forward in May,\u201d Guajardo said. \u201cGiven the urgency of our water situation, that timeline must be immediately accelerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor said the April 9 meeting will focus solely on the desalination project and could allow council members to consider approval sooner than originally planned.<\/p>\n
Guajardo said earlier dates were evaluated, but city staff indicated additional time was needed to prepare the contract for council consideration.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the current timeline, any meeting scheduled prior to April 9 would not allow sufficient time for a contract to be prepared for Council consideration,\u201d Guajardo said.<\/p>\n
She said the April 9 meeting provides enough time to finalize the agreement while still responding to community concerns about the region\u2019s water future.<\/p>\n
Guajardo is also urging the public to attend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am calling on residents, business leaders, and community stakeholders to attend the meeting and make their voices heard in support of securing a reliable, drought-proof water supply for Corpus Christi,\u201d Guajardo said. \u201cThe Inner Harbor desalination project must move forward immediately \u2014 there can be no more delays.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting announcement comes as city officials continue responding to a historic drought and criticism from Gov. Greg Abbott about their handling of the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During a media briefing Friday morning, City Manager Peter Zanoni emphasized that the city is not immediately running out of water but acknowledged the drought has intensified the urgency to expand supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not running out of water. This is no time to panic,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cWe have 76 million gallons of new water supply coming online.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zanoni said multiple water projects — including groundwater wells, wastewater reuse and seawater desalination — are designed to add roughly 76 million gallons per day to the region\u2019s supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work we\u2019re doing is changing our water system for generations to come,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cIt will bring stability to homes, businesses, and industrial partners.\u201d<\/p>\n
City officials say those projects, along with expanded modeling and planning efforts, are intended to help Corpus Christi navigate the current drought while building a more diversified water system for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Guajardo announced that City Council will hold a special meeting on April 9 to discuss the acceleration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-203631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}