The three members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will decide Sept. 23 whether people who objected to a seawater desalination plant at Port Aransas get a trial-like hearing, or whether the permit moves toward approval without one. The plant would send up to 191 million gallons a day of salty leftover water into the Gulf.
The Port of Corpus Christi Authority wants to build on Harbor Island and pipe the discharge under two ship channels and San Jose Island to an outfall roughly 9,800 feet offshore. That offshore route is the point. The port already holds a 2022 permit to discharge into the ship channel itself, won after a seven-year fight in which state administrative law judges at one stage recommended denial. In May 2025 the port voted to give that permit up if it gets this one, calling the offshore route the more conservative approach.
The coalitions have scrambled. The Port Aransas Conservancy, which fought the inshore permit for years and took it to court, now backs the offshore version, along with the Coastal Conservation Association’s Texas chapter and state Rep. Denise Villalobos. Opposition moved up the coast: roughly 60 commenters, many from Ingleside and Aransas Pass, joined by the Sierra Club’s Coastal Bend group, the local Surfrider chapter and a fishing guides’ association, say the brine threatens Redfish Bay, oyster waters and Gulf fishing. Agency staff put the worst case at 3.61 parts per thousand of added salt about 90 feet from the outfall and called that insignificant. A handful of names appear on both the support and opposition lists in the agency’s own record, so neither camp should be described as united.
The commissioners are not ruling on the plant Sept. 23. They are deciding who counts as an affected person with enough personally at stake to earn a hearing before administrative law judges. If they turn the requests down, the permit goes to a vote or back to staff for final action. No new testimony is taken either way.
Also up: final adoption of the renewed water permit covering ready-mix and concrete products plants statewide, which expires in November; a judges’ recommendation on an air permit for a concrete plant in Missouri City; a landfill proposed near Aurora in Wise County; and more than forty enforcement orders against companies and cities, among them Dow Chemical, LyondellBasell and the City of Amarillo.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Wednesday, September 23, 2026. The notice, TRD 2026005502, was filed September 15 at 10:20 a.m.
- Where
- 12100 Park 35 Circle, Building E, Room 201S, Austin, and by Zoom (webinar ID 838 8054 9000) or telephone at (346) 248-7799.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — three full-time commissioners the governor appoints to staggered six-year terms with Senate consent. Brooke T. Paup is chairwoman; no seat is vacant.
- Format
- Regular agenda meeting, roughly 60 items, most of them enforcement orders. The commission takes no oral argument on the desalination hearing requests.
- Live video
- Live and archived on the agency’s webcast page and its YouTube channel, which holds meetings back to 2018.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · TCEQ agenda (PDF)
Commissioners
- Brooke T. Paup — chairwoman; Austin; lawyer, former Water Development Board member.
- Catarina R. Gonzales — Austin; environmental lawyer, former governor’s policy adviser.
- Tonya R. Miller — Austin; energy attorney, former TCEQ air office director.
Roster from the agency’s commissioners page, checked September 16, and cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases: Paup named chairwoman January 7, 2025, term to August 31, 2027; Gonzales appointed February 8, 2024, term to August 31, 2029; Miller appointed October 3, 2025, term to August 31, 2031. The same three names appear on the agency’s June 2026 organization chart and on the chief clerk’s August 19, 2026 letter in the desalination docket. Kelly Keel is executive director. Meeting contact: Georgia Carroll-Warren, (512) 239-3313.