Israeli firm's $6.4 billion desalination plan for Corpus Christi Bay stirs a debate over private ownership of Texas water

Texas has talked for more than two decades about turning Gulf seawater into drinking water without building a single seawater plant. A project on Corpus Christi Bay could change that, and it is bringing a fight over who should own the state's water supply, Inside Climate News reported in a story republished Wednesday by Texas Public Radio.

This summer a small state agency, the Nueces River Authority, picked IDE Technologies for its Harbor Island desalination project. The Israeli company says it has built over 400 plants across 40 countries. At full size the plant could produce up to 100 million gallons of fresh water a day, which IDE says would make it the biggest such facility in the Western Hemisphere.

The plan

The design calls for nearly seven miles of tunnels under the bay plus pipelines and pump stations reaching over 200 miles inland to fast-growing cities in south Central Texas. IDE would finance and construct the plant; the river authority would handle the pipelines. Together they carry an estimated price of $6.4 billion.

IDE expects to set a water price in January, and Corpus Christi must then decide on a long-term deal that would obligate the city to pay for the water even if it does not use it.

Other private plants are in the works: a second IDE plant near Brownsville, a 27-million-gallon-a-day plant planned near Houston by the Canadian company EPCOR, and a 9-million-gallon plant at the CC Polymers plastics complex, which plans to start up early next year and sell water to Corpus Christi.

Two views of private water

Texas water supplies have traditionally belonged to cities, river authorities and utility districts. Critics quoted in the report say private ownership will cost customers more. Mary Grant, water policy director at Food and Water Watch, said private projects borrow at nearly twice the cost of public agencies, which can use low-interest government loans and municipal bonds.

Corpus Christi council member Roland Barrera said he worries about what prices will look like when a 20- or 30-year contract runs out.

"Water infrastructure should be owned by the community," said Drew Molly, Houston's chief water officer and a former head of Corpus Christi's water department.

Supporters see it differently. Council member Gil Hernandez said the private sector builds for far less than cities do. Mark Ellison, who leads IDE's Texas work, said customers lock in a price before construction starts and the developer carries the risk if costs climb, as happened when Corpus Christi's own desalination effort stalled.

Kyle Frazier of the Texas Desalination Association said users began looking past rivers and aquifers as drought became more persistent over the last decade.

Sources

tpr.org