Recent News
The Corpus Christi City Council plans to spend $500 MILLION to construct desalination plants in the Corpus Christi Bay. Why? Because BIG CORPORATIONS want the water, and they want YOU to pay for it.
It's true. Plant construction would be funded by taxpayer-backed loans with NO commitment from corporate customers to pay, putting Corpus Christi families on the hook for higher taxes and water bills!
CORPORATE DESAL isn’t just a bad deal for Corpus Christians, it’s a disaster for the Corpus Christi Bay. Desal plants would spit out billions of gallons of harmful wastewater, jeopardizing fishing, birding, recreation and tourism!
Don’t let the Corpus Christi City Council make YOU pay for CORPORATE DESAL that pollutes our bay and drowns our community in debt! Please sign up today to oppose the Desal Disaster!
As reported in the November 5th Corpus Christi Caller-Times, a new economic analysis conducted by Autocase concludes that proposed baywater desalination plants are not only the most expensive but also the most environmentally and socially damaging water options available to Corpus Christi.
The new report finds that the total cost of each of the three desalination facilities proposed by the City and Port of Corpus Christi would be roughly double that of tapping into groundwater from the Evangeline Aquifer and expanding water conservation strategies.
The report also reveals that manufacturing, especially petrochemical refining, has driven most of the regional growth in demand for water over the past decade, accounting for nearly 70% of the region’s increase in water use between 2010 and 2020. Growth over the same period for all households, commercial uses, fire protection, public recreation, and sanitation totaled less than 6% altogether.
Alarmingly, the report shows that the baywater desalination would have potentially devasting environmental and social costs, including impacts to local commercial fisheries resulting from the discharge of brine and increase in salinity levels in the bay system. The report indicates that the impact of baywater desalination plants on just six key fish species could cost the region up to $6 million per year.
On October 26, the Hillcrest Residents Association, Citizens Alliance for Fairness and Progress, and Earthjustice filed a civil rights complaint against the City of Corpus Christi for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act based on the City’s decision to locate a new industrial facility – the Inner Harbor Desalination Plant – in the historically African American Hillcrest neighborhood.
Corpus Christi’s refinery row surrounds Hillcrest residents who have endured decades of segregation followed by environmental racism in the form of refinery pollution, new highways, and disinvestment by governmental entities. As a result, Hillcrest residents have a 15-year lower life expectancy than other parts of Corpus Christi.
Join us in telling the City of Corpus Christi and all candidates for City Council that it's time to stop environmental racism in our town. No desalination in the Hillcrest community. No desalination in Corpus Christi!
"Regulators and scientists worry that each plant’s discharge of tens of millions of gallons of hyper-salty wastewater per day could disrupt reproductive cycles for a host of aquatic species, which rely on the half-salty waters of the coastal bays for their larvae to mature."
"All together, environmentalists say, the plants’ discharge, coupled with the pollution and ocean freighter traffic from the industrial boom they would unleash, may constitute a near-fatal blow for life in the bay, whose once-teeming ecosystems have nursed coastal communities since long before Corpus Christi existed."