CORPUS CHRISTI, TX — A Corpus Christi committee held its last meeting before presenting findings on a proposed Inner Harbor desalination project to city council Tuesday, June 2.
The Far Field Committee's meetings have focused on the environmental impacts the proposed project would have on the bays and surrounding area.
Spheros Environmental Group conducted the modeling for the study. Spheros found that desalination would increase stratification — brine discharge — into the ship channel by 2 PPT a day. PPT measures the weight of dissolved salts in grams per thousand grams of water. Outside the ship channel, Spheros found the discharge would be less than 0.5 PPT.
Committee member David Loeb said the study results are good news and that the Inner Harbor is the right location for the project.
"Area that would be affected would be an artificial ship channel that's dredged to 60 feet deep, that's nowhere near the species highway or the estuary. It won't affect the estuary and that's great news," Loeb said.
Fellow committee member Aaron Price disagreed.
"People have to understand the ship channel is part of the fish highway. Shrimp spawn near the jetties and those eggs and things they take the ship channel and they flow into the estuaries and the shallow bay system. Having stratification in there and salt increase in those areas is not good," Price said.
Price said there should be a blind, independent peer review of the model and that the committee needs more time before presenting the study's findings.
Committee member Deanna King also said the study is being presented to council prematurely.
"We have scientists on this committee who say this study is not being done properly and then the answer is 'we don't have enough time to include all the variables.' if you know that then why are you doing this study? Because you're not doing it properly," King said.
The findings from Spheros's model will be presented to Corpus Christi City Council on Tuesday, June 2.
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