I was born and raised in Corpus Christi. This is my home. Where my parents met. I care about the future of our larger Coastal Bend community. And as a newly elected co-chair of the Corpus Christi Democratic Socialists of America chapter, I believe something fundamental about the future of our city: Our economy and public resources should be organized around the needs of people, not the endless demands of unchecked industrial expansion.
That is why what happened at City Hall in the late evening of Sept. 1 matters.
For the second September in a row, residents helped defeat the Inner Harbor desalination project. This time, the City Council voted 5-3 against the contract needed to continue designing a project with a preliminary price of nearly $979
million.
This effort did not happen overnight. For years, Corpus Christi residents have researched, testified, organized their neighbors, challenged environmental studies, sat through marathon council meetings and refused to accept the argument that Inner Harbor desalination was inevitable or geared for people. Hillcrest residents and advocates have fought even longer against concentrating industrial and environmental burdens around our historically Black neighborhood. This week, Hillcrest won too. The plant proposed beside their community will not move forward as currently planned.
But we celebrated a similar victory last September, only to watch Inner Harbor return. The project's permits remain intact. That means our next demand should be clear: Corpus Christi should take the necessary steps to surrender or terminate the permits associated with Inner Harbor desalination. If Inner Harbor is dead, bury it. Stop preserving the machinery for another resurrection and stop spending public resources dragging residents through the same fight.
Then let's have the harder conversation about why we need more water. Corpus Christi residents did not create our regional water crisis by taking showers or watering lawns. According to local officials, roughly 20 large industrial companies account for around 60% of Corpus Christi's water demand.
For more than a decade, our city encouraged new polluting refineries, liquefied natural gas terminals and other water-intensive industrial development while promising the water necessary to sustain that growth. Now working people are expected to live under restrictions, pay higher bills and help finance increasingly expensive infrastructure to accommodate demand they did not create.
That's backwards. A people-first approach to water starts somewhere different: Water is necessary for life, and human need must come before private accumulation. That doesn't mean pretending Corpus Christi doesn't need new water strategies. We do. It means refusing to treat every projection of future industrial demand as an obligation that residents must satisfy.
Corpus Christi should strengthen industrial conservation and curtailment requirements, expand water reuse, reduce water loss, examine strategies for limiting evaporation from our surface-water system and invest in conservation and public education. New supply projects should be evaluated transparently based on affordability, ecological impact, resilience and who will actually use the water.
Most importantly, residents deserve to see future demand separated clearly: How much water do the people and businesses already here need, and how much projected demand comes from industrial facilities that do not exist yet? Industrial facilities continue to make it difficult to have a more clear sense of how much water they’re using/will need.
Water planning is a question of political power. Who gets to determine what Corpus Christi becomes? Who benefits from economic growth? Who pays for the infrastructure supporting it? And which neighborhoods are expected to live with the consequences?
For generations, working-class communities along the Texas Gulf Coast have been asked to provide the land, labor, water and public infrastructure for an extractive economy while absorbing its pollution and risks. We don't have to organize our future that way.
The defeat of Inner Harbor offers a different lesson. Power does not belong exclusively to corporations, consultants, developers or people with access to City Hall. Working people can study complicated issues, organize one another, challenge powerful institutions and change what their government considers possible.
Corpus Christi residents proved that last September. When Inner Harbor came back, we proved it again this week. Now let's finish the job. Terminate the Inner Harbor permits. Put industrial conservation and responsibility first. Protect affordability. Protect residents. Expand reuse. And give residents real democratic power over the future of the resource none of us can live without.
Our water system should serve the people. The people should not be made to serve the endless demands of industry.
Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Armon Alex is a community organizer, environmental justice advocate and member of the Corpus Christi chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s served on multiple city of Corpus Christi committees such as the Island Strategic Action Committee and the Water Shore & Beach Advisory Committee.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Inner Harbor lost. Water system should serve the people | Opinion
