CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — The Corpus Christi City Council is voting Tuesday on whether city staff should work with CPS Energy to explore turning seawater into drinking water at the Barney Davis Power Plant in Flour Bluff.
The plant already uses seawater from the Laguna Madre, a salty inlet connected to the Gulf of Mexico, to cool its power generators. That water is stored in the Barney M. Davis Cooling Reservoir, near Yorktown Boulevard and Waldron Road.
The reservoir was built in 1973, holds about 6,600 acre-feet of water, more than 2 billion gallons, and covers roughly 1,100 acres. It sits off to the side of the main water channel and is surrounded by a soil-cement levee that stretches over 6 miles.
Because the plant already has seawater pumping and storage infrastructure in place, experts have been discussing the possibility of desalination there for decades. Desalination is the process of removing salt from water so it can be used for drinking.
Past efforts to move the project forward stalled, largely due to cost and the city having sufficient water supplies at the time. Estimates suggest a full desalination plant could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take several years to build, with numerous environmental permits required.
Now, with population growth, expanding industries, and drought concerns, city leaders are revisiting the idea to help secure future water supplies. If the council votes yes today, city staff will work with CPS Energy to study the cost, feasibility, and steps needed to move the project forward.
