{"id":424449,"date":"2026-09-02T23:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424449\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T23:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:44:21","slug":"corpus-christi-city-council-again-rejects-desalination-plant-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424449\/","title":{"rendered":"Corpus Christi City Council Again Rejects Desalination Plant Proposal\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Corpus <\/p>\n

Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

Corpus Christi City Council members have again voted against awarding a design-build contract for the Inner Harbor desalination plant, continuing a year-long division among council members on the project.<\/p>\n

The proposed desalination plant seeks to add to the city\u2019s water supply. Because of rainfall<\/a> experienced in the area during the summer, the board was able to push back the estimated timeline of declaring a Level 1 Water Emergency by a year. The city was also able to move<\/a> to Stage 1 water restrictions in late August, a first since March 2024.<\/p>\n

During the Tuesday meeting<\/a>, 54 people signed up to speak during the public comment period, according to Kiii News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Public comments against the proposal included concerns over the project\u2019s closeness to the town of Hillcrest, criticism that the project is a \u201cscam\u201d and not technically or fiscally sound, as well as environmental concerns.<\/p>\n

Ardurra, the company responsible for designing the project, presented several possible changes to address environmental concerns.<\/p>\n

Some of the proposed changes include real time monitoring of the bay\u2019s salinity levels and a pipeline that would be built during the project\u2019s second phase to discharge brine into the gulf, allowing the plant to potentially produce more water.<\/p>\n

Despite these changes, the council rejected the proposal in a 5-3 vote, with council members Carolyn Vaughn, Eric Cantu, Gil Hernandez, Kaylynn Paxson, and Sylvia Campos voting against. Councilmembers Everett Roy, Mark Scott, and Roland Barrera were in favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The council previously postponed<\/a> the vote for the proposed plant during its June meeting, following a lengthy discussion on the environmental impacts.<\/p>\n

Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> has criticized the city council for delaying the desalination plant project, despite receiving $800 million from the state to fund water projects.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s safe to assume the state is watching, and I think it\u2019s safe to assume the federal government is watching,\u201d Councilmember Scott said. \u201cAnd so I think any delay is going to get a negative reaction from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The board was also briefed<\/a> by John Byrum, executive director of the Nueces River Authority, on a different proposed desalination plant known as the \u201cHarbor Island Desalination Project.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\n Addie Hovland is a journalist for Texas Scorecard. She hails from South Dakota and is passionate about spreading truth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Corpus Christi City Council members have again voted against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,124418,124419,410],"class_list":["post-424449","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-local-governance","tag-local-spending","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424449","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=424449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}