The Texas Water Development Board meets Aug. 24 to vote on a $7 million grant to the Nueces River Authority for engineering work on a seawater desalination plant near Port Aransas. It is the only substantive item on the agenda. Anyone who wanted to address the board by video had to register by noon Aug. 21, before this article published; in-person speakers can sign up until 8:30 a.m. the morning of the meeting.
The Nueces River Authority is a state body created in 1935 to manage water across a basin that reaches from the Edwards Plateau to Corpus Christi. It wants the money to design a system that would carry treated seawater from the planned Harbor Island plant to Corpus Christi and Portland. The sum is small against what the authority asked for earlier this year. In April the same board turned down its request for $140 million from the state’s main water loan program, scoring the application one point below the cutoff in a round where requests reached about $4.2 billion and, for the first time in the program’s eleven-year history, the board turned an applicant away.
The agenda says the grant is made under HB 500, the supplemental spending bill the Legislature passed in 2025. That law gave the board $1.038 billion in general revenue for water projects and grants “as determined by the board,” money the agency is now distributing through a new grants program that has to commit its funds by August 2027. The excerpt of the bill the board publishes does not name the Nueces River Authority, and the Dispatch could not confirm that the Legislature earmarked this particular grant.
The award has already been counted before it was made. The authority’s own board adopted a 2027 budget on Aug. 14 with the $7 million in it, plus nearly $5 million in contracts tied to the grant. The board told KRIS 6 News that Governor Greg Abbott had directed the agency to fund Harbor Island planning and would not say whether the grant had been awarded; a spokeswoman said she was not sure which program the money would come from. A month earlier the governor’s office had told the same station there was no formal state commitment to the project. The authority’s deputy executive director said he expects action Aug. 24 but does not have the dates in writing.
Watch whether the board approves the resolution as posted, and whether it says on the record which pot of money this comes out of.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Monday, August 24, 2026. The notice was filed August 14.
- Where
- Barbara Jordan Building, Room 2.034, 1601 Congress Ave., Austin, and by Microsoft Teams webinar.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Water Development Board — three full-time members the governor appoints with Senate consent to staggered six-year terms. L’Oreal Stepney is chairwoman.
- Format
- In person and by webinar. Public comment is taken on any matter within the board’s jurisdiction. Telephone-only participation is not allowed.
- Live video
- Streamed and archived at AdminMonitor.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · board agenda (PDF)
Board members
- L’Oreal Stepney, Pflugerville — chairwoman since January 2025; engineer, member since 2023.
- W. Brady Franks, Austin — appointed September 2025; former state budget director.
- Ashley Morgan, Georgetown — joined October 2025; attorney, former state agency counsel.
The roster follows the board’s own members page, cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases for Stepney, Franks and Morgan. Accommodation requests: Jacque Lustig, (512) 463-8676, two workdays ahead. Meeting contact: Kathleen Ligon, (512) 463-8294.