Patrick Nye: “It’s not just about resistance, but also persistence…”

A native of Corpus Christi and recently-retired geologist, Patrick Nye helped found Coastal Watch Association (CWA) in 2019 to educate his community about the environmental risks of industrial expansion in the Ingleside area. Currently serving as the group’s co-president, Patrick and CWA’s staff and volunteers are helping lead the charge against a proposed ammonia plant, Project YaREN, planned to be built just two miles from Ingleside Primary School. The Current sat down with Patrick and asked him to answer five questions. Here’s what he had to say:

Tell us a little about your background?

I grew up in Corpus Christi and played tennis at King High School. I got a partial scholarship to Texas Tech, where I played tennis on the team there for several years. Texas Tech is a fine school, but Lubbock made me realize how beautiful Corpus Christi is. It just wasn’t where I wanted to live my life, so I came back. I had earned a zoology degree, but I was teaching tennis, which is fortunate because that’s how I met my wife, Julie. Then I realized no one but my wife loves a zoologist, so I went back to school at what is now A&M Kingsville and got a second degree, in geology. That was when the oil business was picking up, because we didn't have enough oil in the United States at that time. Today you don't even think about that, but we needed to find more reserves, and I felt like this would be a good profession. Being a naturalist and environmentalist, I wanted to help keep that business clean as possible and I thought that I could make a difference in that part of the field, too. I started out with some independent firms in Corpus Christi, and then in the late 90s I was approached by Paul Strunk, who is deeply respected in the geological and geophysical fields, and he hired me to go work with him. We were successful in oil and gas, and then about halfway through my career, we decided to go into renewables. And eventually we developed some of the largest wind projects in North America. That was something I was really proud of – delivering energy that’s non-polluting, that uses less water – something that’s really beneficial for the world. A few years ago, I started thinking about retiring, but I didn’t want the folks who worked for us just to be let go, so eventually I was able to help find positions elsewhere for everyone, and I retired in 2024.

Tell us about your parents?  What role did they play in making you who you are?

My mother was born in Beeville, and my dad had grown up in Kansas. And during World War II, he came down here to be a trainer pilot at NAS Corpus Christi. He flew into Chase field at Beeville to do some training with other pilots, where saw my mother walking on the street and said, “I'm going to marry her." And he did. Later my father became a lawyer, and he always taught me respect for the judiciary. He was also very concerned with ethics, and there’s an ethics award that is given to attorneys every so often that is named for him. He was the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals. My mother was, well, saintly – she loved her Catholic faith. Her car would turn automatically to go to church, I think. She went every morning. And that developed in me a spiritual side that I still embrace. Also my father’s passion for nature and boating also inspired those same feelings in me. So yes, my dad and mom were absolutely instrumental in setting the basis of my priorities in life.

When and why did you move to Ingleside on the Bay?

Well, partly I moved over here because I didn’t like the traffic in Corpus Christi! But it wasn’t just that, I didn’t like some of the other things I was seeing happening. My parents had a house here on the water for many years, which I had bought from them in the early 80s. I didn’t have enough money to do that by myself at the time, so I brought in some friends as partners and we used it as a time-share. But eventually I was able to buy them out, and then we used it as our weekend house. My Dad and brothers and I had built the house back after Hurricane Celia damaged it in 1970. But 40 years later it was in pretty bad shape, so in 2010 we tore it down, built our new house here, and made the move. This is our “forever after” home, and Julie and I love it out here. We have two sons, Austin and Colin, and also two grandchildren, so it’s been a wonderful place to be together with our family and friends.

You helped found Coastal Watch Association.  What drove you to do that, and what it the group’s primary focus right now?

I started working on protecting Ingleside when I was in high school. There was a tank farm that Sunoco wanted to expand and my best friend and I, then our parents, joined in stopping that, and we won. When I was college, we also fought industrial expansion where Enbridge is now.  And then we fought the City of Ingleside when they wanted to annex Ingleside on the Bay. We fought to maintain our own individual city charter. So these are the fights that I've been doing here for a long time, and I just feel the obligation to do what I can to protect this community. We started Coastal Watch Association because we had a professor show us what relative sea level is going to do to our community over the next 30 years. I’ve already seen the tide come up 1.5 feet just in my lifetime here. Beyond that, we were seeing such aggressive industrial expansion in this area that it just became clear that our quality of life was immediately at risk.  We’re always working on lots of things, but right now our primary focus is Project YaREN, the proposed ammonia plant. We have two big meetings coming up in Ingleside. The Planning and Zoning Commission and then the City Council, for votes on a special land-use permit for the project. If they if they approve it, then they’ll be able to build their facility. If they deny it, then we’ve stopped them, at least for now. So that is what we’re thinking about and working on every moment right now. Getting the public to fully recognize the urgency of this issue and speak up. And honestly, we’re a little bit battle weary, because people thought we won this a long time ago – when the City Council rejected this permit the first time – but it turns out we didn't. So, we have to really ramp things up over the next couple of weeks.

What advice do you have for people who want to make a difference in their community? What does it take to really make the change you want to see?

I would say it takes courage, but I think even more so it takes determination. It takes resiliency when you lose something to get back up and keep going at it. Yes, we’re probably going to lose more than we win. But if we didn’t try, then they would have already taken everything they want. They would already be doing the things that we’ve been working to stop. So it’s not just about resistance, but also persistence. Also, I’m a scientist, and I've always felt that science is the best basis – the best argument – for influencing permitting to prevent these harms to the environment and to our communities. That’s one of the main things I've been trying to promote during my career with the Coastal Watch Association. I’m really proud of what our group has accomplished. I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job of educating and engaging our community. And we’ve always tried to work well with other organizations – to be there if they needed us, just as we hope they’ll be there when we need them. I think the Coastal Action Network is a great example of that. We’re stronger when we work together.