TWDB rejects SWIFT loan for Harbor Island desalination plan

The Texas Water Development Board has rejected the Nueces River Authority's application for a $140 million low-interest loan to advance its Harbor Island seawater desalination project, dealing a fresh blow to an agency already engulfed in scandal.

The denial, first reported this week by KIII-TV, came through the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas, the same program funding Corpus Christi's separate Inner Harbor desalination effort. NRA Deputy Executive Director John Chisholm told the station the application ranked 13th in this year's SWIFT cycle, while only the top nine or ten projects received funding. Chisholm called the result a surprise and attributed it to a tight funding pool.

What Chisholm did not say is that his agency is the same one whose executive director is under investigation, whose chief operating officer resigned in March alleging a pattern of misleading statements to public bodies, and whose former quality assurance officer faces 38 criminal cases of tampering with public documents.

In a March 27 resignation letter to the NRA Board of Directors, Chief Operating Officer Travis Pruski accused Executive Director John Byrum of presenting inaccurate water sales figures to both the agency's own board and the Corpus Christi City Council during the summer and fall of 2025.

Pruski, a more-than-twelve-year veteran of the agency who oversaw water sales to customers outside Corpus Christi, alleges that Byrum told the NRA board on August 8, 2025 that 36 million gallons per day of Harbor Island capacity had been sold and that the corresponding revenue was already in hand.

Pruski's records, according to the letter, showed only 21 MGD actually committed at that time. The 36 MGD figure, he alleges, did not become accurate until November 4, nearly three months after Byrum first cited it. Byrum repeated the same number to Corpus Christi City Council at meetings in September and October 2025, after which council members voted to commit a $2.7 million non-refundable reservation fee to the project.

Pruski's letter also alleges that NRA leadership has put a $30 million flood-mitigation grant at risk through administrative delays, that he was excluded from budget discussions for which he was responsible, and that staff were instructed to limit communications with the board members charged with overseeing the agency. He also raised concerns about the feasibility of the figures used to justify reservation contracts presented to the board for fiscal year 2025-26.

Byrum has declined to comment on the allegations, citing personnel matters. The NRA Board has retained independent legal counsel to conduct what it calls a thorough and objective review.

A separate investigation by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, reported by KRIS 6 News in October, identified falsified signatures on more than 20 microbial sampling reports submitted by the NRA between June and August 2024. The reports, which track water quality and safety in communities served by NRA across the region, bore signatures of individuals investigators say did not actually collect the samples. Some of the disputed forms appeared to bear Byrum's own signature as field collector, even though Byrum confirmed to KRIS 6 that he does not personally collect water samples.

The TCEQ has referred 38 cases of tampering with a public document to the Nueces County District Attorney's office against the agency's former Quality Assurance Officer. The investigation began after Corpus Christi Water staff testing samples submitted by the NRA flagged a form they suspected had been signed by someone no longer employed at the agency, then questioned whether Byrum himself had performed the field work attributed to him.

Byrum has previously put the total Harbor Island desalination project cost at $5.5 to $6 billion and targeted first water for December 2029. But with state SWIFT financing now off the table for this cycle, Chisholm says the agency will pursue private investors and unspecified federal support. Whether the NRA can secure either while its director is under investigation, its sales figures are in dispute, and 38 criminal cases over falsified records work their way through Nueces County, is the question now hanging over the largest proposed seawater desalination project in Texas.