Officials in Corpus Christi, Texas, chose Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. to design and build the city’s planned Inner Harbor desalination plant. Local leaders estimate the cost of the project at $757.6 million.
The seawater desalination plant would have a capacity of 30 million gallons per day. Corpus Christi Water officials plan to build the plant on a site next to the Inner Harbor Ship Channel, which connects the Port of Corpus Christi to the Gulf of Mexico. The plant will extract and discharge to the channel.
Kiewit beat out two other shortlisted teams bidding for the job, scoring the highest for its technical proposal and interview, but scoring the weakest on its cost proposal, which officials say was based on in fractional cost components and is not indicative of the expected final cost. The company employs more than 1,600 people near a yard in Ingleside, Texas, officials added when announcing the selection.
A Kiewit representative said in a statement that the company plans to partner with “many local subcontractors and suppliers to safely deliver” the plant.
Parent company Kiewit Corp. ranks second in the ENR 2024 Top 400 Contractors. The company has past experience designing and building desalination plants in California and Texas.
City officials say they plan to issue a notice to proceed in December for work to begin next year and be completed by the end of 2027.
In July, the Texas Water Development Board approved the city’s request for $535.1 million for the project through the State Water Implementation Fund program for in Texas
Local opposition
The proposal has seen some opposition from locals who say the plant will primarily serve petrochemical facilities at the expense of the predominantly black and Hispanic residents who live nearby.
“The City of Corpus Christi has a long-standing pattern of discriminatory siting of industrial facilities in this historically black neighborhood, subjecting black and brown residents to disproportionately adverse health and property impacts from increased of industrialization,” Erin Gaines, senior attorney at the nonprofit Earthjustice. , he said in a statement earlier this year.
Corpus Christi Water, which supplies about 500,000 people, says the desalination plant is needed to help secure local water supplies against drought.
“So much of our future depends on new water supplies,” Drew Molly, chief operating officer of Corpus Christi Water, said at an Aug. 7 city council meeting outlining plans for several infrastructure projects, including the desalination plant.
