CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The new relationship between the City of Corpus Christi and the Port of Corpus Christi is expected to bring benefits that could potentially strengthen the region.
On Tuesday, port CEO Sean Strawbridge joined Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni in updating the city council on plans for building a desalination facility.
3NEWS sat down with Strawbridge on Wednesday and asked about the new era of cooperation between the two entities.
"If we do nothing, we will be in significant dire straits in just a few short years,” he said.
The port and city hope a united front will make any future applications for desalination project funding more appealing to state officials.
"I certainly believe that if the port and the city are collaborating, not only in the actual project and the pursuit of business for the project, but in pursuit of funding for the project, I think that just increases our chances of securing that funding exponentially, yes," he said.
Strawbridge spoke on why our region can no longer put off pursuing drought-resistant water sources, citing a city study released last year by the Baker Institute at Rice University.
"It's prognosticating that if we do nothing and the forecasted demand grows between now and 2070, the state will be over 3 billion gallons a day short of water,” he said.
As to where to put the proposed desal plant, the city prefers a smaller facility at the Inner Harbor, while the port prefers a larger operation on Harbor Island.
Strawbridge told 3NEWS that both could help.
"We look at future generations and what is going to be the demand over the next 50 years, not over the next five or 10 years," he said. "We believe that Harbor Island offers a better solution for that long-term scalability than most other locations. That doesn't exclude the Inner Harbor as a viable location for meeting near-term demands.”
Even if everything was ready to go Wednesday, it would still take at least 3-5 years to get a desal plant built.
In the meantime, members of both the city and the port visited Harbor Island on Wednesday, and are going to start visiting other proposed sites at the Inner Harbor and the Barney Davis power plant, in order to familiarize themselves with each of the proposed locations.
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