City manager unveils no-cost plan to revive Inner Harbor desalination; mayor says she called for action<\/a><\/p>\nJake Hernandez with the Texas Campaign for the Environment said the group has long opposed the city\u2019s desalination projects because of potential impacts to marine life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Inner Harbor desalination plant, the brine was planned to go right back out into the ship channel, which would create dead zones in the water,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cThe water would become over-concentrated with salt that could lead to a lot of things, like a loss in plant and animal life, red tide, and just generally degrading the bay in a way that we should not be tampering with.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Texas Campaign for the Environment has offered public comment against several of the city\u2019s proposed desalination sites. Scientists have also raised concerns about how excess salinity could affect local marine ecosystems.<\/p>\n
Dr. Edward Buskey with the University of Texas Marine Science Institute said changes in water chemistry could make conditions ripe for harmful algal blooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cRed tide is a harmful algal bloom. It\u2019s caused by dinoflagellates \u2014 they\u2019re protozoan organisms, they\u2019re plants, they\u2019re autotrophs,\u201d Buskey said. \u201cSo they create toxins. It\u2019s something we\u2019ve had issues with in the past. But typically they don\u2019t start in the Inner Harbor; they start in the Gulf of Mexico and move into the bays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even the less controversial Harbor Island project, which would discharge brine into the Gulf of Mexico instead of local bays, raises ecological questions. Buskey said estuary-dependent species near Harbor Island could still be at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is right at Harbor Island there are these estuary-dependent species,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are larval fish and shrimp and crabs that could be impacted by that. The adults go out to the Gulf of Mexico, they feed for a while and have to go back in, and part of how they pick the location is the salinity level. So it\u2019s possible to mess up all of that recruitment if you\u2019re releasing brine into Harbor Island.\u201d<\/p>\n
City leaders have said desalination is key to meeting long-term water demands for residents and industry. Environmental groups counter that more research is needed before any project moves forward.<\/p>\n
Stay with 3News for coverage of the city\u2019s ongoing desalination proposals and potential environmental impacts as the situation develops over the coming weeks and months.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts warn desalination projects could harm marine life and fuel red tide in Coastal Bend waters as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-47314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47314","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=47314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}