Corpus Christi’s water crisis is a man-made catastrophe

By Elida Castillo, Program Director, Chispa Texas

As published in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, March 27, 2026

Governor Greg Abbott has threatened to “take over” Corpus Christi if the City Council doesn’t proceed with building the Inner Harbor desalination plant, saying he’s “committed to making sure Corpus Christi residents are going to have the water they need.” In response, Mayor Paulette Guajardo has called an emergency meeting for April 9 to force a new vote on a reconfigured proposal after the Council rejected a previous $1.2 billion plan.

But Abbott’s threats are politically motivated and completely divorced from reality. The reason for our region’s water crisis is not residential demand but a handful of large industrial users — chief among them Exxon, Valero, Flint Hills and Oxy — who now consume a majority of our region’s water; by some estimates more than 60 percent. Yes, supplies we’ve relied on have become less reliable due to upstream use and longer dry spells driven by climate change. But this is not just a natural disaster — it’s also, and much more so, a man-made catastrophe. The City of Corpus Christi committed billions of gallons of future water supply that simply won’t materialize under the current drought conditions to refineries and petrochemical facilities, and now the region’s residents are being handed the bill.

Abbott looks past two critical facts. First, the Inner Harbor plant would not deliver a single gallon of new water for three to five years — it does nothing for the current crisis. Second, over the past six months, the City Council has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to securing 120 million gallons per day of new supply, including from another seawater desal project. Those commitments alone have residential bills on track to jump over 80%. The Inner Harbor would pile on another 33%.

And the $750 million the governor says was “squandered” — referring to the state’s SWIFT loans — is not a grant but a loan that must ultimately be repaid by ratepayers. At some point, the question of how much debt is too much stops being an accounting problem and becomes a moral one when Coastal Bend families and small businesses are being forced to pick up the tab for industrial customers.

It's true that when it comes to solving our immediate water crisis, we don’t yet know the extent to which the water projects the city has already invested in will get the job done. But at some point, the City Council has to have enough confidence in the steps they’ve already taken to stop rushing into the next new megaproject, because every additional commitment now risks breaking the bank entirely.

And the financial risks, as enormous as they are, are hardly the only arguments against the Inner Harbor plant. It would pump tens of millions of gallons of concentrated brine into the bay every day. Marine scientists warn that high-salinity discharge into a shallow, semi-enclosed system could create oxygen-depleted dead zones that suffocate fish, shrimp, crabs, and other aquatic life – an enormous gamble with an irreplaceable ecosystem and the tourism economy that depends on it. Notably, a comprehensive far-field study of the discharge’s impact on the bay has only recently been commissioned by the city; it must be complete before any vote is taken.

Then there is Hillcrest. The plant would add another layer of industrialization to a community already boxed in by refineries, pollution, and highways. How we treat Hillcrest says something important about who we are, and on that basis alone the Inner Harbor project has always been a terrible idea.

But what’s ultimately most troubling about this aggressive push by Abbott and Guajardo is that it really just amounts to political sleight of hand. The current drought is being used to justify billing Coastal Bend residents for massive water investments that are, everyone knows, only needed to serve big industry. Already these industries consume most of our water, while accounting for a relatively small share of local jobs – less than 10 percent at best. That simple math makes the right conclusion clear: the Inner Harbor proposal carries huge financial, environmental, and community risks, and the City Council should reject it, once and for all.