{"id":324719,"date":"2026-06-05T22:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/324719\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T22:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:17:07","slug":"city-leaders-divided-over-inner-harbor-desalinations-effects-on-marine-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/324719\/","title":{"rendered":"City leaders divided over Inner Harbor desalination’s effects on marine life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A scientific dispute over the environmental impact of the Inner Harbor desalination project has prompted seven Corpus Christi City Council members to postpone a vote on the project until Sept. 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The dispute came to a head during Tuesday’s 15-hour city council meeting, pitting the Spheros Environmental Group \u2014 which conducted the far field study \u2014 against a group of 13 scientists who say the project could affect marine life in nearby bays.<\/p>\n

City leaders divided over Inner Harbor desalination’s effects on marine life, nearby bays<\/p>\n

“No. Their model seems to indicate there will be potential for impacts,” Dr. Michael Wetz and Dr. Sharon Herzka, Far Field Study Committee members, said.<\/p>\n

The lead modeler on the far field study pushed back on that assessment.<\/p>\n

“No I don’t agree with that. I do model water quality a lot. What I’m not going to comment on is the biology side that’s their expertise,” Dr. Pradeep Mugunthan, lead modeler for the Far Field study, said.<\/p>\n

District 3 Councilmember Eric Cantu questioned the scope of the study during the meeting.<\/p>\n

“We asked city staff to do a far field study to understand impacts of the bay to see if its safe. And he just said he doesn’t know what’s in the bay. I don’t understand what we’re doing,” Cantu said.<\/p>\n

City Manager Peter Zanoni, who participated in the far field committee meetings, defended the Spheros report’s conclusions.<\/p>\n

“The Spheros report clearly shows the Inner Harbor Desalination facility would not have an impact on aquatic life in the bay,” Zanoni said at Friday’s weekly water briefing.<\/p>\n

Zanoni also addressed why the environmental study did not include an assessment of how the inner harbor project would affect fish and other marine animals.<\/p>\n

“Never in the contract was there any discussion of any marine biology assessment. Never in the contract was there any direction to Spheros nor payment to do a dissolved oxygen model,” Zanoni added.<\/p>\n

The question now facing city leaders is whether to trust the modeler or the scientists who say they need more time.<\/p>\n

“People can draw their own conclusions we appreciate the scientists. Unfortuantely they’ve never done a far field model. We’re gonna believe our consultant that we paid $300,000,” Zanoni said.<\/p>\n

The next city council meeting is June 23. Zanoni said that is where a new water dashboard will be presented, and that the Level 1 water emergency is expected to be pushed to sometime in 2027.<\/p>\n

For the latest local news updates, click here<\/a>, or download the KRIS 6 News App. <\/a><\/p>\n

Catch all the KRIS 6 News stories and more on our YouTube page<\/a>. Subscribe today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A scientific dispute over the environmental impact of the Inner Harbor desalination project has prompted seven Corpus Christi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,4572,116137,24556,6712,2904,33440],"class_list":["post-324719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-eric-cantu","tag-far-field-study","tag-inner-harbor-desalination","tag-nick-winkelmann","tag-peter-zanoni","tag-running-dry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324719","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=324719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}