"Concerns over ecological destruction have delayed desalination plans for years in this booming seaside city, where environmentalists see water supply as the “chokehold” on an oil sector buildout along the rugged Gulf Coast of South Texas."
"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas—Five years ago, when ExxonMobil came calling, city officials eagerly signed over a large portion of their water supply so the oil giant could build a $10 billion plant to make plastics out of methane gas.
A year later, they did the same for Steel Dynamics to build a rolled-steel factory.
Never mind that Corpus Christi, a mid-sized city on the semi-arid South Texas coast, had just raced through its 50-year water plan 13 years ahead of schedule. Planners believed they had a solution: large-scale seawater desalination.
According to the plan in 2019, the state’s first plant needed to be running by early 2023 to safely meet industrial water demands that were scheduled to come online. But Corpus Christi never got it done."
Dylan Baddour reports for Inside Climate News November 4, 2022.
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