Fossil fuel group applies pressure on Inner Harbor

When the City Council meets tomorrow, a federal grant application for the Inner Harbor desalination plant will be back on the agenda – the same item that “Fab Five” council members voted down three weeks ago.

It's back again not only because the Bureau of Reclamation grant application deadline falls before September 1, when the council is scheduled to vote on whether the project should move forward at all; but also because Voices for Coastal Bend Energy – a Washington-funded group representing the fossil fuel industry and its local allies – announced last week that it had secured private funding to cover the city's cost of preparing the application, one of the reasons Council member Carolyn Vaughn cited for voting against the item in June.

The VCBE press release insisted that the group’s offer was “not intended to influence any future decisions regarding project approvals." Well, of course not. Industry lobbyists routinely spend tens of thousands of dollars on outcomes they're completely indifferent to.

Regardless of the group’s absurd spin, we believe this latest push by big industry to advance the Inner Harbor plant reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of their intended target’s core position – as well as her feelings about being pushed around.

Many in our coalition disagree with Carolyn Vaughn about many important things. On most days that gap is wide. But with regard to the Inner Harbor plant, many of us have also come to admire something about her that has nothing to do with ideology: she reacts very badly to being bullied.

She showed it in March, when Governor Greg Abbott threatened to "take over" Corpus Christi unless council members supported the Inner Harbor project. Vaughn pushed back. She showed it again last month, when she called out city officials for falsely announcing that the far-field model results had proved the project would have no negative impact on the bay.  And she showed it at the June meeting, when she refused to be pressured by the mayor and Congressman Michael Cloud into seeking federal funding for a project the council has not approved. “This is just strong-arm tactics,” said Vaughn at the time.

Indeed – and here we go again. VCBE’s latest squeeze play is being presented as a favor, but everyone knows what it really is: yet another effort to box in council members on the Inner Harbor plant by keeping the cart squarely before the horse. That has been the pattern from the very beginning, from City Hall, from Austin, from Washington, and from industry – approve now and analyze later.  Sign contracts now and figure out what the project costs later. Build now then find out later what tens of millions of gallons of daily brine discharge does to our bay system.

But we believe VCBE has misread Vaughn. Her clear, core position – one we happen to share – is that the Inner Harbor plant must be proven unequivocally safe for the bay before it can even be considered, which means that independent marine scientists must have the time they need to review the far-field model data and present their consensus findings. Not staff rushing to characterize preliminary results. Not consultants grading their own homework. That’s not happening before September 1, and only then is a discussion about whether residential ratepayers should foot the industrial project’s billion-dollar bill even viable.

In short, Carolyn Vaughn’s position ultimately has nothing at all to do with who pays for the paperwork for a federal grant application. Her point is that the project hasn’t been proven safe, and it hasn’t been approved. Big industry is trying to put Vaughn in a corner, again. We hope and expect she'll react tomorrow as she has when others have tried pushing her around.