By John — Desalination News
Corpus Christi voters have approved a ballot measure that strips away the industrial water-fee exemption city officials once hoped would help pay for a seawater desalination plant, delivering a roughly two-to-one verdict that unwinds a financing arrangement at the center of the city’s years-long desalination saga.
The “Fair Water Amendment,” a citizen-led charter amendment that qualified for the November 3 ballot after a petition drive gathered nearly 13,000 verified signatures, passed despite heavy spending against it by industry groups, according to reporting by Inside Climate News and Texas Public Radio. The measure targets the city’s largest water users — refiners and petrochemical makers including ExxonMobil, Valero and OxyChem — who currently pay about $4.50 per 1,000 gallons under a 2018 deal that let them avoid standard drought surcharges by instead paying a flat “drought surcharge exemption fee” of $0.31 per 1,000 gallons. Under the new amendment, that exemption and its fee disappear, replaced by automatic, tiered surcharges that kick in without a council vote once reservoir levels fall below set thresholds: an additional $3 per 1,000 gallons below 30 percent capacity, $6 below 20 percent, and $12 if the city declares a water emergency.
The 2018 exemption fee was originally expected to help underwrite a new seawater desalination plant at the city’s Inner Harbor, built to supply the growing industrial base with water that wouldn’t compete with residential and agricultural demand during droughts. This outlet has tracked how that financing math fell apart over the following years: the exemption fee generated only about $6 million annually, while estimated payments needed to support the plant climbed as high as nearly $70 million a year by 2025, a gap that stemmed directly from the broader cost escalation we reported on in October, when the Inner Harbor project’s price tag grew from an original $140 million estimate to as much as $1.2 billion. The city council ultimately voted to reject the Inner Harbor contract for a second time, leaving the exemption fee in place even after the project it was meant to help fund had effectively been abandoned.
City Council member Sylvia Campos, who backed the amendment, said after the vote that “the people have woken up,” adding that the measure’s supporters had overcome heavy industry spending to win the race. City Manager Peter Zanoni acknowledged the result carries “significant legal implications that the city will have to address,” and officials expect industry groups to challenge the amendment in court and before the Public Utility Commission of Texas once it takes effect, which will not happen for five years under the measure’s built-in grace period. Texas Campaign for the Environment, which helped organize the petition drive, called the result proof that the community is “tired of being plundered,” while one local business advocate warned in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that the move could complicate how the city is perceived by companies weighing new investment.
The vote arrives as Corpus Christi continues weighing alternative paths to new water supply, including the Flour Bluff power-station site this outlet reported on last month and the privately financed Harbor Island project down the coast, both part of a broader scramble among Texas Gulf Coast communities to diversify beyond a river system strained by a five-year drought that pushed reservoir levels below 8 percent earlier this year. Whatever the legal outcome, the referendum removes the last vestige of the financing structure that was supposed to pay for the city’s most ambitious desalination plan, and puts city officials back to square one on how industrial water users will share the cost of the next drought.
(Source: Inside Climate News, Texas Public Radio)