For two years, John Byrum sold South Texas on a big idea. A small river authority based in Uvalde would build a 100-million-gallon-a-day seawater desalination plant on Harbor Island. The river authority’s board president, Eric Burnett, has called the future facility the largest plant of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
Now Byrum is leaving before construction has started, and days before his board is scheduled to discuss his job behind closed doors.
KRIS 6 News has reported several setbacks for the project this year. Design work on its pipeline stopped after the engineering firm ran through its contract. Byrum said federal money was coming, but no commitment has been made. And in June, the agency’s chief financial officer confirmed that money for the project could run out by the end of August unless more payments came in…