By John — Desalination News
A little-known regional water agency in South Texas, the Nueces River Authority (NRA), is pushing forward with plans for a seawater desalination plant at Harbor Island that backers describe as the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The project, developed in partnership with Israeli desalination giant IDE Technologies, would draw water from the Gulf of Mexico to help ease chronic shortages across the region.
To get there, the NRA has set up a nonprofit intended to help it raise outside funding, and brought on a San Francisco finance firm to help select a private partner for the build. A separate engineering contract with a Houston firm was cancelled, and the agency is now negotiating with several other engineering firms to move the project forward.
The plan has drawn scrutiny over how the NRA has financed its early efforts. Reporting has found the agency continued collecting deposits from municipalities for water they were told was reserved, even though the water had not, in fact, been fully allocated. One nearby city paid over $80,000 to secure a share of future capacity months ago.
The project’s backers see it as a template other Texas communities are already following: a separate $1 billion, privately financed plant is under development at South Padre Island, also using IDE’s reverse osmosis technology and also aimed at the Rio Grande Valley’s growing water needs. Texas officials have pursued partnerships with IDE for close to a decade, including a 2016 visit by state lawmakers to an Israeli facility to study the company’s public-private partnership model.
Whether Harbor Island reaches construction will depend on the NRA locking in both a financing partner and firm engineering plans — steps that, so far, have proven slower and more contested than the agency’s early public statements suggested.
(Source: Inside Climate News)