CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It's a topic that's made it way through numerous city council meeting and has been hard to separate fact from fiction—desalination.
"What is the impact on marine life in the bay area?" said one Corpus Christi woman who was present for public comment at Tuesday's Corpus Christi City Council meeting.
It was a question that was echoed by many in attendance who brought their similar concerns before city leaders. The volume of speakers spanning over four hours of public comment.
But what really is the impact of desalination on our local ecology? It's a question University of Texas Marine Science Institute Director Edward Buskey said has many contributing factors, one such being salinity.
"You have high salinity, it's going to change the type of species that you find in that area," he said.
Buskey said that because of the nature of desalination plants, the environment will be impacted in a multitude of ways.
"You're going to be making the water a little warmer and you're definitely going to be making it saltier," he said.
It's a process, residents at Tuesday's city council meeting were very vocal about when they gave their public statements.
"We have told you how it's going to kill our bay, the fishing industry. Also students at TAMU-CC who study marine biology. I was one of those students. They come to TAMU-CC to study marine biology in the bay, it's gonna be dead," said one resident who was also vocal about her stance on desalination in Tuesday's council meeting.
Buskey said that while desalination does provide a fresh water source to our community, messing with the water's salinity levels can leave local ecosystems in a state of disrepair.
"It's going to effect some of the species that live there, so the abundance and diversity of some of the marine species could change," he said.
Corpus Christi Water COO Drew Molly said that the city does have a plan in place to protect the environment.
"Our plan is to build a pilot plant this year where we would test some of the equipment on a smaller scale to make sure that it works exactly how it needs to work," Molly said. "We're going to run water through the facility and we're going to test it and we're going to generate a lot of data, and this data will ultimately be shared with the TCEQ so that it's very clear as to how this water is going to behave once it gets integrated into our existing water system."
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