Inner Harbor Desalination 101: Who’s It For, And Who Pays?

The Corpus Christi Bay is an ecological treasure and economic engine for the entire Coastal Bend region. That’s why a growing coalition of community groups is deeply alarmed by the City of Corpus Christi’s plan to build a massive desalination facility in the Bay’s Inner Harbor. In our regular “Inner Harbor Desalination 101” series, the Current spotlights key facts about the City’s plan in an effort to advance the case that the project must be stopped to protect our bay and our way of life.

The first and most critical fact to understand about the City’s proposed Inner Harbor desalination facility is who the water is for.

Backers of the project often cite the region’s long-term water needs and drought worries to justify desalination, giving the impression that the Inner Harbor facility is about securing drinking water for residents and local businesses. But the truth is that large industrial users dominate water consumption in Corpus Christi’s water system, far exceeding residential and small business use.

In fact, between 2010 and 2020, industrial water demand in the Coastal Bend region surged by around 70% while residential demand grew by only around 5%. KRIS-TV reports that “the lion’s share” – between 60% and 80% – of Corpus Christi’s water is now used by industrial customers.

Much of the current imbalance was set in motion in 2017 when the City hastily committed 20 million gallons per day (MGD) to ExxonMobil/SABIC’s planned plastics plant in Gregory, and another 6 MGD to a Steel Dynamics’ mill, without any public vote. Today big new industrial water guzzlers continue to come online – for example, a new Tesla lithium refinery could use up to 8 MGD – and indeed the City’s 2019 regional water plan projected sending an additional 55 MGD to industry by 2030 to serve new projects.

Meanwhile the city’s own data shows that all residential and business customers in Corpus Christi typically uses only 60–70 MGD, and have never used more than 100 MGD. Considering that Corpus Christi’s existing water treatment plant can produce 167 MGD, it’s plain who the proposed 30 MGD Inner Harbor desalination plant is really intended to serve.

It's also important to understand exactly who some of our biggest industrial water users are. Many are the same refineries and petrochemical plants that line our bay, including some of the largest emitters of air and water pollution in Texas. Sadly, our region consistently ranks among the worst for unlawful air emissions – one analysis found that the Corpus Christi area had “unauthorized air pollution events” on 351 out of 365 days in a recent year – and seven of the nation’s ten worst water-polluting refineries are along the Texas coast, including the Valero refinery in Corpus Christi, which has been the second-largest discharger of toxic dissolved solids of all U.S. refineries.

In other words, many of the Coastal Bend’s current and would-be worst air and water polluters are among the primary drivers of the City’s Inner Harbor desalination plan. But by satiating their thirst for water, the City’s plan becomes much worse than just unnecessary for residents and local businesses – it becomes a giveaway of public resources to big industries whose practices routinely put the health and safety of the public at risk.

And indeed, how much will the City’s plan cost, and who will pay? The current cost estimate for the Inner Harbor desalination plant is at least $757 million – a figure certain to increase. Shockingly but not surprisingly, the City’s funding plan relies heavily, if not entirely, on the public. Corpus Christi Water intends to use ratepayer-backed loans to fund construction, but with no firm commitments that big industrial users will pay their fair share, meaning residents and local businesses are likely to shoulder most of the costs. Already the City estimates that residential water bills could increase by more than 50% over the next five years if the Inner Harbor plant is built.

Thus not only would some of our region’s biggest industries and worst polluters get all the water they want, our families and small local businesses would be on the hook for the bill. This is only one of many reasons that community opposition to the Inner Harbor plant continues to grow.

Next week, we’ll look at the direct ecological threat that Inner Harbor desalination presents to the Corpus Christi Bay.