09/02/2025
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT READ FOR EVERYBODY IN CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS......RESPOND BY ATTENDING TOMORROW'S CITY COUNCIL MEETING.....YOUR VOICE ON WHAT YOU THINK IS IMPORTANT.......I'M NOT ASKING YOU WHAT YOU THINK, BUT TO FIGURE OUT WHICH PROJECT YOU SUPPORT AND TELL THE PEOPLE THAT SIGN THE CONTRACTS..................YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR VOICE COUNTS...SEE YOU THERE,,,,
🚨 : Why Can't Corpus Have Nice Things? Corpus Christi’s Water Future Balances on One Pipe, Two Empty Lakes, and a Council Playing Games on Tuesday - 70%. That’s how much of Corpus Christi’s total water flows through the Mary Rhodes Pipeline currently, a single artery stretching from Lake Texana to the city. If that pipe fails, the “backup” is Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi, both flowing at a pitiful 13%. In other words, one bad break, one major failure, and Corpus Christi would be looking at toilets that run dry in weeks, not months.
This is why the drought proof Inner Harbor Desalination Plant really matters. It’s not optional. It’s survival. The project is fully permitted, backed by the State of Texas, and already funded with $231 million in Texas Water Development Board bonds. It can be online by 2028, it offers stable costs of about $90 million a year. Most importantly, it would be City-owned, not rented from private corporations, not borrowed from other municipalies or industry. Owned out right by residents with tax, title, and license.
But instead of embracing a City-owned solution, some Council members have slowed the citys progress, floating alternatives like the Evangeline aquifer and Nueces River brackish desal projects. New analysis by engineering firm Garver shows these “quick fixes” won’t deliver a single gallon until 2029 or 2030, at best. Even then, combined output is less than Inner Harbor’s capacity. And unlike the City’s project, these schemes rely permitting, electrical work, land deals, and equipment procurement synchronization all at the same time. If one piece stumbles, the entire plan collapses, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars. Corpus Christi would literally be left with dry wells and useless electrical hookups.
Meanwhile, a secret contract proposal that residents can't see is taking shape. A privatized water contract through Seven Seas and the South Texas Water Authority (STWA). The contracts are breathtaking in their audacity. Corpus Christi would pay, but own nothing. After 30 years, the infrastructure stays with Seven Seas, while taxpayers keep footing the bill like Alice Texas residents currently. Take-or-pay clauses mean the City must buy water whether it needs it or not. Escalation clauses guarantee the price climbs every year. Risks of pipeline breaks, overruns, surcharges are all shifted onto residents. And if the City walks away? Termination fees apply. That’s not a deal. That’s slavery.
And the numbers? Even worse. Emails from Seven Seas pitched water at $3.50 per thousand gallons originally. Days later, Kleberg County judge Rudy Madrid, Nueces County commissioner John Marez who is ironically the executive director of South Texas Water Authority, and their attorney Charlie Zahn, who ironically was the chairman to the Port of Corpus Christi that planned to dump brine near Port Aranasas, told City Council the price was $5.50. That $2.00 discrepancy equals $77 million more every year or more than $2.3 billion over three decades. Somebody’s making money off the markup, but it sure isn’t Corpus Christi families.
Former Water COO Drew Molly, who resigned last week, tried to raise these alarms in a resignation letter. He pressed for answers about electricity costs, transport, and escalation clauses in council meetings. He questioned how STWA could sign up with no competitive bidding for what amounts to a billion-dollar contract. But it efforts has fallen on deaf ears on the Council.
The dangers arent hypothetical. In Alice, Texas, where residents live under a Seven Seas contract for brackish desalination, the results are already clear. Average bills there show water being charged at over $5.60 per thousand gallons, nearly double Corpus Christi’s current rate and Alice' own financial review projects another $25 a month increase by 2030. That’s a 70–100% jump in less than five years, with no infrastructure owned by the community at the end of the deal.
On Tuesday’s agenda, Council will also decide whether to approve Amendment #5 to the City’s contract with Kiewit, a local company that employs 15,000 locals, the firm who won the bid to designing the Inner Harbor desalination plant. A “yes” vote would authorize Kiewit to move the project to the 60 percent design milestone and deliver a guaranteed max price by March 2026. In other words, Council would finally have hard numbers on the table, something critics keep demanding while simultaneously voting to delay the very process that produces them. Blocking Kiewit doesn’t save the City money. It only leaves Corpus Christi paying bond debt with no water and no plan.
District 2 Councilwoman Sylvia Campos has already signaled she will vote against moving forward, claiming Corpus Christi “put all its eggs in one basket” with Inner Harbor. Instead, Campos argues the City should diversify by pursuing other water projects namely brackish desal from Evangeline or Nueces River wells. The problem, as outside engineers have made clear, is that neither project can deliver water before 2029 or 2030, and even then, the combined yield would be less than Inner Harbor alone. It is diversification by delay, a political talking point dressed up as a solution, while residents sit under drought restrictions and reservoirs dwindle at 13%.
So here we are, on the eve of a Council vote. On one side, the Inner Harbor Desalination project, City-owned, shovel-ready, financed, and online by 2028. On the other hand, a privatized, secret contract, finder’s fees, tariffs, and decades of escalating bills with nothing to show. The Crónica is not naïve. We know why Inner Harbor faces so much opposition. It’s not about science, or even water. It’s about who gets paid.
The question is no longer whether Corpus Christi needs new water, that’s painfully clear. The question is whether our leaders will secure it through a project the people will own, or sell us into a 30-year contract that guarantees profits for insiders and escalating bills for everyone else.
