Local leaders in the southern tip of Texas have spent years drawing up a plan to turn Gulf of Mexico salt water into drinking water in the face of crippling droughts.
The proposed desalination plant in Port Isabel came closer to fruition in early January, when the Bureau of Reclamation announced a $17.5 million federal grant to help move the project forward.
“We’ve been working on this project for many, many years. Seawater was identified as an alternative water source for us back in the ‘90s,” said Eduardo Salazar, director of finance for the Laguna Madre Water District. “But the need is greater now than it was back then.”
Yet the status of the water district’s federal funding is uncertain since the Trump administration took office, Salazar said. If the grant isn’t awarded, approximately 12,300 people served by the water district could be on the hook for the full cost of the plant, projected to be about $70 million, he said.
