If Corpus Christi can’t revive desalination plant project, it may owe Texas $235 million

Corpus Christi received $235 million from Texas for a seawater desalination plant — and never built the facility. Now, the city may have to return the money to the state, including the $50 million already spent and $72 million in interest, Dylan Baddour writes for Inside Climate News.

Earlier in September, city officials declined to pursue developing the desalination plant for the second time in a year, citing cost concerns. Corpus Christi has been mulling over building a desalination plant for over a decade, debating the project's location, cost, environmental impact and benefits to residents “even as a regional water shortage grew increasingly likely,” Baddour writes.

Inside Climate reports:

“That’s going to be a painful experience if the State of Texas calls our notes due,” said City Council member Mark Scott at the Sept. 1 meeting before the vote that rejected the desalination project. “I think we are dangerously close.”

Returning the money would “seriously damage our relationship with state leadership, negatively impact any future loan applications and continue to put downward pressure on our credit ratings,” Scott said in a follow-up statement.