CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Since Corpus Christi City Council decided to begin the process to build a seawater desalination facility, residents have raised many concerns. In fact, the meeting they approved everything, public comment took four hours to go through.
“There’s a lot of information out there, so we want to make sure that we get the right information out to the public,” said Drew Molly, Chief Operating Officer of Corpus Christi Water.
Molly sat down with KRIS 6 News to give answers about seawater desalination.
The number one concern residents have voiced about is what is the blow back on the taxpayers for a facility like this.
“We know for a fact that a brand new water supply is going to have an impact on rates," Molly said. "The question is, is how is it going to impact our rate customers? And, there’s different rate classes. So, we need to make sure that this is an equitable rate.”
Molly said the city is working with a consultant on rate analysis to help with that process.
What about the location?
The plant will be near the inner harbor on land around Summers Street. Pipes will go from the facility to the bay. It’ll be located near north side neighborhoods and some larger industries.
Molly said the desalination plant is essentially a water treatment plant. He said it will be no more a disruption than the city’s current water treatment plant, O.N. Stevens, on the west side. To Molly's knowledge, there haven't been any complaints filed about disruptions caused by the O.N. Stevens Water Treatment Plant.
“Water treatment plants, unlike waste water treatment plants, there really isn’t a smell. We try to make sure that even at wastewater treatment plants that smells are kept to a minimum, but this is not a wastewater treatment plant. It’s not an industrial refinery, it doesn’t have smoke stacks,” he said.
One disruption Molly thought of might be truck traffic to and from the facility along Nueces Bay Boulevard.
The way water desalination works is water is taken in. It's treated through a membrane system to filter out the salinity of the water. The product is water that is drinkable. According to city staff, using a jet diffuser a discharge, from the process, will go into the ship channel,.
Molly added that any solid objects brought in from the bay that can't go through the process, will be placed in a landfill and not put back into the bay.
There is concern having the intake of the plant in close proximity to the discharge.
Could that harm the life of the bay?
“That has been studied quite a bit and the science and the data shows that there would not be any impact from the discharge and the intake being relatively close. Ultimately, what we're concerned about, we want to make sure the discharge meets the environmental criteria and we want to make sure produced by this plant meets the TCEQ and EPA requirements,” Molly said.
The desalination plant is expected to produce 30 million gallons of water a day. It's true, that's not enough to cover the entire amount of water used by the Corpus Christi Water District in a day. The water district has many customers outside of Corpus Christi. As Corpus Christi grows, more water will be needed.
"Just the residential growth alone by 2030 is (an additional need) of 15 million gallons a day. So, we need to commit to our residences and our businesses to make sure that those residences have have that water security," Molly said.
As of Friday, the water storage level was at 31 percent, one percent away from stage two drought restrictions. Molly said because Corpus Christi heavily relies on rain and this geographic area does not produce enough rain, it's unlikely enough rain will fall to boost water storage levels back over a comfortable 50 percent.
So, city staff view desalination as one piece of the water shortage puzzle.
"We know that this is one step of many that needs to happen," Molly said. "So, I can attest to our viewers out there that we are looking at other water supplies. This is not the entire solution that we're bringing to the table and frankly our council has an expectation that this isn't just the only solution."
There are concerns that this hasn't been done before. According to the Yale School of Environment the first desalination plant was built in the 1960’s.
"The desalination technology is not new technology. It's been done around the world. There's over 19,000 seawater desal plants in the world," Molly said.
Molly added that some of the leaders in desalination technology will be helping with the project.
It’s still early in the process, but the next step will be to approach contractors about designing the facility.
"It is an exciting time because a lot of folks want to be a part of something transformative. And so, we believe that by us going out and communicating what we're trying to do what we plan to do, there's going to be a lot of and there already has been, a lot of interest from the contractor community," Molly said.
Many have voiced their opinions on the project and Molly wants that to continue.
"We want to make sure folks have some input. Because clearly, architecture has not been completed, landscaping has not been completed. These are all things some folks may think it's small but we think those are important aspects of this project. We want to make sure that it is a structure, is a facility that folks are proud of," he said.
Molly is expecting the plant to be up and running in 2028.
To see Molly's full interview you can view it on Youtube.
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