Corpus Christi is a city of 316,000 residents on Texas’s Coastal Bend, a rich marine area along the Gulf of Mexico. Located close to multiple water hungry industries, this city located in a drought-plagued state is also home to multiple proposals to build desalination plants that would turn abundant saltwater into freshwater for plastic manufacturers and other industrial end users. This requires a lot of energy but also produces brine, which can be twice as salty as seawater and can contain elevated levels of heavy metals. Corpus Christi Bay is home to myriad fish, mammal, and shorebird species, including threatened and endangered ones, so the five desalination plants proposed – each of which would siphon tens of millions of gallons of water daily from the bay and then pump the extra salty water laced with metals back into the bay – have been met with stiff opposition. Cyndi Valdes is just one of the activists organizing against the ‘desal’ plans. In her role as Coastal Watch Association’s Executive Director, she’s constantly organizing and educating people about the issue, and spends long hours in the city’s meeting rooms to provide comment on the numerous proposals and related permits being issued for such projects. She responded to Mongabay’s questions via email, and her answers have been edited lightly for brevity. Fishing, birdwatching and other outdoor pursuits are popular on the rich waters surrounding Corpus Christi. Image by Starco Charters via Instagram. Mongabay: Last year, Sierra published a feature about all the desalination…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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