ADDING SEAWATER DESAL TO CORPUS CHRISTI’S WATER PORTFOLIO: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE RAMOS
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he City of Corpus Christi supplies water to half a million people in Texas’s Coastal Bend region. Its water supplies are derived from surface water from local reservoirs and Texas’s Colorado River. After the drought years of 2011 and 2013, it became apparent that alternative water supplies were needed. With this in mind, Corpus Christi has begun work with the consulting firm Freese and Nichols to develop plans for two potential seawater desalination plants. In this interview, Steve Ramos, the city’s water resources manager, speaks with Municipal Water Leader Editor-inChief Kris Polly about the process of siting and permitting the new plants—and the benefits they could bring to Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bend. Kris Polly: Please tell us about your background and how you ended up in your current position.
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Steve Ramos: The City of Corpus Christi has four sources of water. We are a surface water–based utility servicing approximately Steve Ramos. 500,000 people— individual customers, industrial customers, and commercial users—within our region of the Coastal Bend. Our surface water comes from the Nueces River basin, where we have two large reservoirs, Choke Canyon Reservoir and Lake Corpus Christi. Moving eastward, we have a contract with the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority for water out of Lake Texana, which is delivered via the Mary Rose pipeline to our O. N. Stevens Water Treatment Plant. Further eastward, we have a surface water right on the Colorado River itself; we divert that water to our treatment plant via what we refer to as the Mary Rose Phase 2 Component, part of the same pipeline that we use to move our Lake Texana Water. Kris Polly: What is the breakdown of your users? Steve Ramos: Around 36 percent of our water goes to residential customers, 60 percent goes to industrial users, and the rest is commercial. Kris Polly: What motivated Corpus Christi to look into desalination? Steve Ramos: The City of Corpus Christi is the leader in providing water for this region, and as the leader, we need to look at diversifying our water supply and water rights portfolio. We learned that very well in 2011 and 2013, when the drought of record in the Nueces River
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI..
Steve Ramos: I am the water resources manager for the City of Corpus Christi. My background is in water. I previously worked for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ ), where I spent 12–13 years working on water rights. I was a project manager with TCEQ working with multiple entities from across the state of Texas on water rights projects and water rights applications; I also worked along with the hydrology team and other members of the permitting process on rulemaking for the state. Around 2011, I was given the opportunity to become the South Texas and Concho water master for TCEQ. I was in charge of overseeing permits and regulations regarding surface water rights for about 50 counties in South Texas. At the same time, I was also in charge of the Concho watermaster area in West Texas. I was in charge of water rights regulations for the state, making sure that water rights holders were abiding by their water rights, working together, and resolving any issues that arose and also making sure that the prior-appropriations doctrine and rules and regulations were being followed. Toward the end of 2016, I was given the opportunity to come work for the City of Corpus Christi as the water resource manager for the city.
Kris Polly: Please tell us about Corpus Christi’s current water portfolio. Where does the city’s water come from?
