EPA may try to block what could be the first seawater desalination plant built in Texas

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant in El Paso is the world’s largest inland desalination plant and turns brackish groundwater into freshwater. A state agency on Thursday approved a permit for what could be Texas’ first seawater desalination plant, on Corpus Christi Bay. (Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune)

Texas regulators issued an environmental permit Thursday for the Port of Corpus Christi to build what could become the state’s first seawater desalination plant — but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may refuse to accept it.

The state permit for a desalination plant on Harbor Island represents the culmination of years of business strategy, political maneuvering and lawyering effort on behalf of the port, which wants to build a large-scale facility to convert seawater from the Gulf of Mexico into freshwater. The marine desalination plant is expected to cost at least half a billion dollars to construct; an estimate provided to the Texas Water Development Board puts the cost at more than $800 million.