Corpus Christi desalination far-field study advances as key modeling questions emerge<\/a><\/p>\nCorpus Christi City Council had been expected to vote on the project April 28.<\/p>\n
City leaders say the study is critical because council members want to know how the proposed desalination plant could affect the bay system before making a decision.<\/p>\n
City Manager Peter Zanoni said the City expected consulting firm Spheros to rely heavily on Jordan Furnans, a modeler familiar with the local bay system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company that City Council approved the contract for, Spheros, had a lead modeler, Jordan Furnans, who is familiar with the bay system and has done several studies here before,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cUnfortunately, we were informed yesterday that he\u2019s no longer with the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
The change also led to the cancellation of this week\u2019s far-field advisory committee meeting, catching some members off guard.<\/p>\n
Jason Hale, who has advocated for the project, said the sudden departure created uncertainty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely not ideal what happened,\u201d Hale said. \u201cYesterday I felt my world was turned upside down because I\u2019ve been advocating for this for two years. We had a set plan. We had a set person. A lot of trust in that person and now I have no idea what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hale said much of the work completed so far has been built around Furnans\u2019 original plan and modeling approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe submitted like a plan, like a whole plan,\u201d Hale said. \u201cThis whole thing was kind of his baby. He made the model for the port and we are building on that model. That was two years ago. He did a lot of the legwork and then he basically laid out his vision that we said this is what we want and this is what we voted for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the setback, Zanoni said early indications suggested the proposed desalination plant may not have a major impact on bay salinity.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe seemed preliminarily confident that the Inner Harbor desal facility would be an OK plant in the Inner Harbor ship channel given all the different things that take place in the ship channel,\u201d Zanoni said.<\/p>\n
The consulting firm has requested an additional 30 days to complete the study.<\/p>\n
A draft is expected to go before the advisory group in late May, with the full report expected to reach City Council in early June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City and far-field committee members are blindsided after the lead bay modeler is no longer on the project.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-251620","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\/251620","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=251620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}