Months after Gov. Greg Abbott blasted local leaders for backing out of a plan to build a desalination plant on the Corpus Christi ship channel, the state declined to help finance another, larger desalination facility that could similarly ease the region’s growing water crisis.
Early this year, the Nueces River Authority applied for a $140 million low-interest loan from the Texas Water Development Board to jumpstart planning and design for the larger project, which would be located on Harbor Island but intake water and discharge brine via a pipeline extending two miles offshore. That distance would help minimize the project’s impact on marine life and ecology, according to research.
It’s unclear why the state denied the loan. The water board, whose members are appointed by Abbott, did not respond to specific questions about the project’s scoring. John Chisholm, the deputy executive director of the Nueces River Authority, said the decision was “very surprising.”…