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With more than 7 million Texans living in drought conditions, Arlington lawmaker Tony Tinderholt wants to study the feasibility of seawater desalination to address the state’s water supply challenges.“The goal is that Texas becomes the leader in the nation in desalination of the Gulf Coast water and ships that across the state to solve our problems. But we could also ship it all over the country,” Tinderholt said while talking to Tarrant County business and political leaders in February. “Imagine how powerful that would be.”Tinderholt, a Republican, has made the state’s water infrastructure a priority as a member of the Texas House Water Caucus. Up until the 2025 session, he was the only Tarrant County member on the caucus, which now includes Democrats Ramón Romero, Salman Bhojani and Chris Turner. Tinderholt, who did not respond to further interview requests, filed a similar bill on desalination processes last session, but it never made it out of committee. The legislation comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have named water supply as one of their top priorities for the 2025 session. If passed, Tinderholt’s bill would enable researchers at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University to study the prospect of seawater desalination plants along the Gulf Coast, while examining successful practices used in Israel and Australia. The state’s existing water plan notes that implementing water management strategies and adding new water supply is crucial to stave off severe water shortages if another record drought occurs. If nothing is done, by 2070 around 80% of Texans could face water shortages of some kind, according to the 2022 State Water Plan, which recommends seawater desalination as one strategy. Texas already has 53 municipal desalination facilities for groundwater or surface water but does not have an operational seawater desalination plant although one is under construction.Corpus Christi expects to finish construction of the Inner Harbor Seawater Desalination Plant by 2028, 10 years after its initial proposal.The main difference between the type of water used in desalination processes is the amount of dissolved solids they contain. Because seawater holds more salt, it requires more pressure and energy when filtering, increasing the cost by hundreds of dollars per acre-foot, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the agency overseeing the state’s water supply.Waves almost go over the rail at the end of Bob Hall Pier due Hurricane Ike in the Central Gulf of Mexico. (Jocelyn Augustino | FEMA, via Creative Commons)Debate over desalination, fixes to state’s water issuesJennifer Walker, the director of the Texas Coast and Water Program at the National Wildlife Federation, said the state should first try conservation and fixing broken pipes, which could save millions of gallons annually, before investing billions of dollars in new infrastructure.“We want to make sure that we are being fiscally responsible and ecologically responsible, and if we’re losing lots of water through leaky pipes in our communities, we need to address that before we pivot to the solution of desalinating seawater,” she said.Aside from funding, water policy and resource experts said seawater desalination can pose environmental concerns and affect the state’s fishing industry. Robert Mace, the executive director of the Texas State University water program, said that for every 100 gallons of water pulled from the Gulf, half becomes clean water while the other half becomes a waste stream called brine concentrate that is twice as salty as seawater.“There’s been a lot of controversy with the seawater desalination plant in Corpus Christi about that discharge, particularly because to save money, those plants want to discharge locally to the bay and estuaries,” he said.
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While desalination proponents need to address these concerns, water resources are a real future concern, Mace said.“The only drought-proof supply that we have is seawater desalination from the Gulf,” he said.But conservationists like Walker are concerned this disposal method could pose a threat to the state’s coastline ecosystem and potentially be toxic to sea life. “We have a series of bays and estuaries along the Texas coast that have these barrier islands that are enclosed nursery areas that are very important ecologically,” she said.By discharging salty brine back into the coastal water, she said the state needs to be very careful that “we’re not harming these areas in a way that changes the character of our coast.”Facilities in Australia are returning seawater concentrate to the ocean using dispersion nozzles to rapidly mix the water. This helps keep nearby ocean water at its normal salinity, reducing environmental harm, according to the Sydney Desalination Plant.Through Tinderholt’s bill, researchers would examine international plants’ processes to identify the most environmentally sensitive and cost-effective methods of disposing brine concentrate. The bill has yet to be sent to a committee, where a public hearing and report could be produced about the legislation. Arabella Diedrich is a senior journalism student at UT-Austin and a contributor to the Fort Worth Report through the Reporting Texas program. The Fort Worth Report’s Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.