‘Fighting for 40 years’ – the tiny Texas community facing down Big Industry

Corpus Christi, Texas residents are fighting the encroachment of desalination plants in the Texas Coastal Bend.

Corpus Christi, Texas, US – “It’s a beautiful bay, and it was even more beautiful in the beginning,” says 72-year-old Encarnacion “Chon” Serna, a retired chemical engineer, as he describes Corpus Christi Bay, which lies just a few feet from his doorstep in Portland, Corpus Christi in Texas. It’s the home in which Serna and his wife raised their four children and where their 10 grandchildren often visit to play in the waters that can be heard hitting the shore from their house.

Now, as the oil, gas and petrochemical industries threaten to take what’s left of the Gulf Coast along with Serna’s backyard – petrochemical facilities are currently being built in Ingleside, not far from his home – and as large-scale desalination projects, which will service these industries, gain approval to discharge wastewater back into the bay, he wonders how much longer it will survive.

“I’m not going to take this house or this bay to the coffin. It’s a legacy. It must be here in a healthy form so that future generations can enjoy what I enjoyed,” Serna says.

Just minutes from Serna’s home lie the shores of the La Quinta Channel, home to the Port of Corpus Christi that is owned and operated by the counties of Nueces, San Patricio, and Corpus Christi and is the largest gateway for US-produced energy exports. There, the port authorities and the City of Corpus Christi are each planning to build and operate a new desalination plant – making two in total on La Quinta Channel – if granted final permits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

The La Quinta desalination plants are just two of a total five proposed desalination plants to be built in the Coastal Bend, an area of Texas coastline that meets the Gulf of Mexico. Besides the La Quinta Channel plants, the port authorities also want to build another desalination plant in Harbor Island, in the bay, and the city authorities are planning another in Inner Harbor – an industrialised area, which includes residential neighbourhoods, close to La Quinta. A fifth has been proposed by Corpus Christi Polymers, a plastic resin manufacturer, in Corpus Christi Bay on the Joe Fulton Corridor, which connects to the port’s shipping channel.