Desalination Plan Moves Forward

Hondo and Lytle are one step closer to receiving desalinated drinking water in the future through an agreement between the Nueces River Authority and Port of Corpus Christi.

On Tuesday, July 15, the port agreed to lease 31 acres on Harbor Island to the NRA to build the desalination plant. Harbor Island is northwest, across the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, from Port Aransas, and east, across Redfish Bay, from Aransas Pass.

Intake and discharge pipes for the plant’s seawater will be positioned about 1.3 miles east of San Jose Island, in the deeper water of the Gulf of Mexico. This is expected to avoid harming aquatic life with the higher salinity discharge.

In recent months, the NRA has been working with municipal and industrial water users in South Texas, including Hondo and Lytle, to establish purchase agreements. As a result, 38 million gallons of the plant’s capacity of 100 million gallons a day has already been reserved.

East Texas gets plenty of rain some places 60 inches or more per year. South Texas along the coast from port lavaca south much less and the evap rates are high for surface waters.

This is the hard core science of surface water balance in Texas. When we say hydrogeology this is what we mean.

https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/gishydro/seann/texas/sect5.htm

The east of the state has surplus runoff that if captured could be sent West hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water per year. This doesn’t include the recharge from all that rain into the big three aquifers in the east. The Trinity, Carrizo-Wilcox, and Gulf Coast aquifers all hold large amounts of water that could be produced sustainably due to the rain balance in the east. The opposite is true in the West everything is in deficit in the West. It’s lost past time for Texas to accept this fundamental issue and build large pipelines from east to west and from the coast to the population centers in the semi arid Central Texas area of not feasible to get the land needed for east West pipes. Captured already fresh water is always going to be cheaper than desal. San Antonio is already pulling water from groundwater 130+ miles away, Dallas pulls from Lake Tacoma 80 miles away and is looking east 120 miles to groundwater and Sabine River basin surface water too.

Simple fact is Texas is the fastest growing state in the nation with Georgetown Texas being the fastest growing city of anywhere in the USA. No amount of conservation will replace the need for more raw water supply.

Hi GXP, a geographer would look at it this way: all along the coastline ( probably universally) you tend to have a line of coastal cities at the mouths of major rivers and a another line of inland cities at the inland edge of the coastal plain on the major rivers, where the rivers became less navigable and useful for commercial transportation before trains, plains, and automobiles. Exceptions for the Missiissippi, Nile, etc. In Texas those being SA, Austin, Waco, Dallas.

Austin Mueller was about 660’ MSL IIRC. Minor but ~50%. Google says 632’.

We wouldn’t be sending water to Muller you would be sending it to the outlet elevation of Lady Bird Lake which is 425 MSL from there you would mix it with effluent from both Austin treatment plants which are at 410 ish feet just a little down river. Once mixed you would send it via a subsurface pipeline under the south Bank of Lady Bird Lake at 428 feet all the way to Tom Miller dam and Lake Austin. Which right now is 492’MSL once it outfalls in Lake Austin both of Austin existing potable water treatment plants can pull it from Lake Austin just like they pull Travis water. Every acrefoot that gets put in Lake Austin is one less from Travis taken.

Check out hydromet for real time levels.

https://hydromet.lcra.org/

You are right about port cities and their up river twins. It is easier and cheaper to keep water up hill than pump it back up hill. The plan should always be first stop letting water flow down hill trap it at the upper city and recycle it as much as you can via down river effluent capture and pump back like Dallas does. Since you starved the port city they need to make up for the loss by desal. If the downstream has senior water rights then the up stream must pay for the desal water for them in exchange for keeping the up stream water back.

Some rivers like the ones in South Texas have such little flow in them by the time they reach the coast they are not useable as water sources. The San Antonio river , Guadalupe and Rio Grande in dry years don’t even reach the Gulf with flows. This is why Corpus needs to desal for sure.

The Colorado is special it has a mandate from the legislature for minimum inflow to matagorda bay for crabs and shrimp beds nearly every drop of that mandate is meet with Lake Travis water especially in dry years. This is why the new Arbuckle project is critical and any desal could be dumped there and stored for environmental flows and leave more water in Travis for Austin to use. Austin RR and Georgetown have straws reaching Stillhouse Hollow and soon to be Lake Belton too that’s a good chunk of the while upper Brazos watershed capture area above those two lakes. Austin needs to also teach east for the Trinity and Wilcox aquifers both for raw water and for storage those pipes should be bidirectional. Once you have pipes fast it gets easier to keep going east to the Trinity basin and also the Sabine both in 50-60 inch rain per annum zones vs 20 and under in the upper Hill country. The water is in the east Texas needs to build the pipes to send it west.

East Texas rivers like the Trinity feed Houston with 300000+ acre feet from east Texas rain so Dallas can pump back nearly every drop of effluent it captures down stream in its constructed wetlands.

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