To avoid water crisis, Texas may bet big on desalination. Here's how it works in El Paso.
EL PASO — The wind swept through El Paso one day in March, lifting a fine layer of dust that settled onto windshields, clothes and skin. The air was thick with haze from a dust storm. This border city, perched on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, receives on average less than 9 inches of rain each year.
Water in the city of 679,000 people is a challenge.
Inside El Paso's Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant, Hector Sepúlveda, the plant's superintendent, walks through rows of towering steel tubes as a loud hum vibrates through the air. This machinery is essential to providing thousands in the city with clean water.
'This is a desert community,' Sepúlveda said. 'So the water utilities have to always think ahead and be very resourceful and very smart and find resources to take the water that we do have here and provide for a desert community.'
Sepúlveda says the city's dry climate, compounded by dwindling ground and surface water supplies and climate change has made innovation essential. A key piece of that strategy is desalination — the process of removing salt and other minerals from seawater or salty groundwater so people can drink it.
When it opened in 2007, El Paso's desalination plant was the largest inland desalination facility in the world. It was built through a partnership between El Paso Water and Fort Bliss, one of the nation's largest military bases, when water shortages threatened the base's operations. Today, at max capacity the plant can supply up to 27.5 million gallons per day — helping stretch the city's supply by making use of the region's abundance of brackish groundwater, salty groundwater with salinity levels higher than freshwater, but lower than seawater.
The city wants to expand the plant's capacity to 33.5 million gallons per day by 2028. El Pasoans used about 105 million gallons per day last year.
As Texas faces twin pressures of population growth and prolonged drought, lawmakers are looking to desalination as a way forward. The Texas Legislature took a major step in 2023, creating the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, to support desalination projects — including both brackish and seawater. This legislative session, lawmakers are pushing to accelerate that effort with a bill by state Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, that could dedicate millions for new water projects, including desalination. Senate Bill 7 cleared the upper chamber earlier this month and is now awaiting a House committee's consideration.
'We've developed all the cheap water, and all the low-hanging fruit has been obtained. There is no more of it, and it's depleting what's left. We're going into the second phase of water development through brackish marine, brackish produced water and brackish aquifers,' Perry said on the Senate floor before his colleagues gave the legislation unanimous approval.
Sixty municipal water desalination facilities are already online, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that helps manage and finance water supply projects. Of those, 43 desalinate brackish groundwater. El Paso's is the largest.
As of December 2024, the agency had designated 31 brackish groundwater sites as production zones, meaning they have moderate to high availability of brackish groundwater to treat. The board's 2022 state water plan proposes implementing an additional 37 brackish groundwater desalination projects in South Texas cities like McAllen, Mission, San Benito; and West Texas towns like Abilene and Midland.
The plan states that if all recommended strategies are used, groundwater desalination could make up about 2.1% of the state's projected water needs by producing 157,000 acre-feet per year by 2070 — enough to support 942,000 Texans for one year.
Still, desalination isn't without tradeoffs. The technology takes a lot of energy, and construction costs can be steep. There are also several factors to consider that affect the final price tag: How deep the water lies, how salty it is, how far it needs to travel, and how to dispose of the leftover salty waste.
The water board estimates treating brackish groundwater can run anywhere from $357 to $782 per acre-foot, while seawater desalination ranges from $800 to $1,400. Lawmakers say water funding at a state-level is critical to help communities shoulder the upfront costs of these alternative water supplies.
Sepúlveda, who has spent more than 30 years with El Paso Water, says the process at the desalination plant begins with brackish groundwater drawn from 15 wells near the El Paso International Airport. The salty water is transported to the plant where it is first filtered through strainers to remove sand particles. Then it is transported through cartridge filters. This process is similar to how household water filters work, but far more efficient.
The cartridge filters trap fine sediments smaller than a strand of hair, further filtering the water before it reaches the heart of the system: reverse osmosis, often referred to as RO membranes.
Sepúlveda, who wears a blue construction hat and highlighter yellow vest, stands amid a room full of long rows of stacked steel tubes, or RO membrane units. Here, brackish groundwater gets turned into fresh, drinkable water. It's pumped through these tubes — each with 72 vessels — at extremely high pressure, leaving behind salt and bacteria.
'We're separating the undesirable stuff from the potable water,' he said, as he opened a faucet and sipped the water. 'At the end you end up with safe drinking water. The process is just amazing.'
Once cleaned, the water is divided between El Paso Water customers and Fort Bliss. Sepúlveda said they will soon expand the plant to produce 33.5 million gallons per day by adding a sixth row of RO membranes.
The brine, or concentrated salty water left over from the process, is pumped 22 miles to deep well injection sites. The desal plant can separate up to 3 million gallons of brine a day. At the site, the concentrate is sent 3,500 feet underground into a fractured rock formation.
While brackish groundwater desalination has proven to be a viable solution for inland communities like El Paso, environmentalists are raising concerns about the potential consequences of scaling up the water strategy.
Seawater desalination is gaining attention as Gulf Coast cities like Corpus Christi start developing their own seawater desalination facility.
For seawater desalination, Shane Walker, professor and director of a water research center at Texas Tech University, says the main concern is removing the excess salt. While most of the salinity comes from dissolved minerals that aren't harmful, Walker says, high concentrations — think of over-salted French fries — can harm marine life and disrupt coastal ecosystems.
Seawater is much saltier than brackish water and salt levels vary widely depending on the source.
In seawater desalination, the brine byproduct — which can be twice as salty as seawater — is often discharged back into the ocean. If not properly managed, this can increase salinity in bays and estuaries, threatening species like oysters, crabs and shrimp that are critical to local fisheries and ecosystems.
Myron Hess, an environmental consultant for the nonprofit National Wildlife Federation, said that when plants take in water it could potentially suck in marine creatures with the ocean water.
'As you're diverting particularly massive amounts of water, you can be pulling in lots of organisms,' Hess said.
For inland facilities like the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant, the environmental concerns are different. They don't kill marine life, but disposal is still a concern.
In El Paso, Art Ruiz, chief plant manager for El Paso Water and the former superintendent of the utility's desalination plant, calls this disposal 'chemistry salts' and says that disposal is handled through deep well injection into an isolated part of the aquifer. Ruiz said El Paso is blessed with a geological formation that has a natural fault that prevents the concentrate from migrating and contaminating the freshwater supply. In regions where this is not feasible, evaporation ponds are used, but they require large amounts of land and careful management to prevent environmental hazards.
'Deep well injection is a common method used for larger desalination facilities, but the geology has to be right,' Walker said. 'You have to ensure that the injection site is isolated and won't contaminate freshwater aquifers.'
Another concern raised by water experts is how Texas manages brackish groundwater and whether the state is doing enough to protect nearby freshwater sources. Senate Bill 2658 proposes to exempt certain brackish groundwater wells located within state-designated production zones from needing a permit. Experts say the move would bypass a permitting process in the state's water code that was specifically designed to safeguard freshwater aquifers.
The central worry is that brackish and fresh groundwater are often hydrologically connected. While brackish groundwater can be an important part of the state's water portfolio, Vanessa Puig-Williams, a water expert with the Environmental Defense Fund, says there's a real risk that pumping brackish water could unintentionally start drawing in and depleting nearby fresh water if oversight is not required from local groundwater conservation districts.
Experts also caution that the production zones identified by the water board weren't designed to guide site-specific decisions, such as how much a well can safely pump or whether it could affect nearby freshwater supplies.
Hess, consulting for the National Wildlife Federation, authored a paper on the impacts of desalination, including the price tag. Constructing a facility is costly, as is the energy it takes to run it. El Paso's desalination facility cost $98.3 million, including the production and injection wells construction, $26 million of which it received in federal funding.
The technology to clean the water is energy intensive. Desalinating water in El Paso costs about $500 per acre-foot of water — 46% more than treating surface water from a river. Seawater facilities require even more energy, which adds to the costs in producing or cleaning the water. TWDB estimates those range from $800 to $1,400 per acre-foot.
Texas has no operating seawater desalination plants for municipal use, but the state's environmental agency, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has authorized permits for two marine desalination facilities and has four pending applications for seawater desalination facilities, three in Corpus Christi and one in Port Isabel.
'The first seawater plant in Texas is going to be expensive,' Walker said. 'The first time somebody does something, it's going to cost way more than the other ones that come along behind it, because we're having to figure out all the processes and procedures to do it the first time.'
Back at the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant in El Paso, Sepúlveda, the plant's superintendent, walks into a lab opened to students and professors from the University of Texas at El Paso, New Mexico State University, and Rice University to test new technologies to help refine the desalination processes or extend the lifespan of RO membranes.
Sepúlveda said water utility employees have learned a lot since 2007 when the plant first opened. RO membranes, used to clean the salty water, cost anywhere from $600 to $800. El Paso uses 360 RO membranes to run its plant. To extend the life from five to 12 years, utility employees figured out a system by checking salinity levels before extracting from a certain well.
'When we first bring water in from the brackish wells, we know how salty each well is, so we try to bring in the wells that are less salty to not put the membranes under such stress,' he said. 'It almost doubled the life of the membrane.'
He added that this technique is also helping plant operators reduce energy consumption. Plant operators have adjusted salinity levels by blending the brackish groundwater with less salty water, which helps prevent pipe corrosion and clogging.
Their pipes are also now winterized. After the 2011 freeze, El Paso upgraded insulation and installed heat tape to protect equipment.
As Texas moves forward with more desalination projects, Sepúlveda said the lessons from El Paso will be critical as more plants go online.
'You always have to be forward-thinking. Always have to be innovative,' he said, as the machines buzzed in the background. 'You always have to be on top of the latest technological improvements to be able to extract water from whatever scant resources you have.'
Disclosure: Environmental Defense Fund, Rice University, Texas Tech University and University of Texas at El Paso have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/11/el-paso-texas-water-crisis-desalination/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Store, harvest, fix: How Texas can save its water supply
This is what the state decided on a desal permit requested by the city of Corpus Christi
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Texas may bet big on desalination. Here's how it works in El Paso.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Miami Herald
16-07-2025
- Miami Herald
Florida AG ties ‘weather modification' to Texas floods. There is no link, experts say
Climate scientists and weather experts are clear: the deadly floods in Texas earlier this month were an entirely natural tragedy, with off-the-charts rainfall levels coming from lingering moisture from a nearby tropical storm feeding off a steamy Gulf of America. That has not stopped unfounded conspiracy theories from spreading, mainly in extremist social media circles. Days after flash floods swept away roads, homes and a Christian girls' summer camp, claiming more than 100 lives, posts flourished attempting to link a common practice called 'cloud seeding' in a nearby county with the devastating floods. Florida's Attorney General James Uthmeier jumped in to amplify the misinformation — citing a newly passed Florida law banning loosely defined 'weather modification' practices that climatologists say have nothing to do with increasingly severe weather events. When Uthmeier posted his letter to all public airports in Florida on X this week, many who responded also aired widely debunked concerns that aircraft contrails — those streaks of condensation left behind jets —are actually 'chemtrails' that are part of some sort of nebulous but nefarious government plot. While no Florida official explicitly linked this law to these theories, it hasn't stopped proponents from championing the new law as a solution to the perceived problem. In his letter, Uthmeier warned airports that they must comply with a new state law designed to halt weather modification activity in the state. The bill, introduced by Miami Republican state senator Ileana Garcia, makes releasing substances designed to change temperature, cloud cover or sunlight levels into the atmosphere punishable with a third-degree felony and fines as high as $100,000. Uthmeier, whose spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, called the new law 'another landmark victory for Florida's health, freedom, and environmental protection.' In the letter, Uthmeier doesn't use the phrase 'chemtrails' but seemed to give a nod to the common concerns held by conspiracy theorists, mentioning spraying chemicals into the air that end up 'polluting our water, contaminating agriculture, and destroying human health.' The majority of Garcia's public comments on the bill have focused on cloud seeding and weather modification, but she said she wanted her legislation to help separate 'fact from fiction' when it comes to this enduring but fringe conspiracy theory. 'Many of us senators receive concerns and complaints on a regular basis regarding these condensation trails, a.k.a. chemtrails to many. There's a lot of skepticism in regards to this, and basically, what I wanted to do with this is try to look for a way to separate fact from fiction,' she said in a hearing for the bill. She also thanked supporters for the 'remarkable response' to her bill in a post on X featuring several pictures of contrails, an email from a constituent complaining that the 'sky was peppered with trails this morning,' alongside a screenshot of a social media post claiming that Garcia's bill would 'ban chemtrails.' She's not the first elected Republican to raise similar concerns, even though the Trump administration has flatly dismissed them. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week released a 'fact check' shooting down the 'chemtrails' claims and explaining that those white plumes behind planes are simply condensation that occurs when hot, humid air from a plane's engine mixes with colder air in the atmosphere. 'Contrails are a normal effect of jet aircraft operations and have been since its earliest days of air travel. If you are seeing a lot of contrails in your area it is because there are a lot of jet aircraft flying overhead,' the EPA wrote. 'The federal government is not aware of there ever being a contrail intentionally formed over the United States for the purpose of geoengineering or weather modification.' A state ban on 'weather modification' Florida's new 'weather modification' law is vague. It does not clearly differentiate between decades-old, somewhat successful practices like 'cloud seeding' — spraying common chemicals like silver iodide to coax more rain or snow from clouds — from theoretical 'geoengineering' concepts scientists have brainstormed to potentially slow some impacts of climate change. Those ideas, many untested and far from reality, have also often been lumped into broader weather-control conspiracies. In a statement celebrating his signature on the bill, Gov. Ron DeSantis specifically mentioned weather modification and geoengineering but does not mention chemtrails. His statement also explained that a public portal for reporting suspected geoengineering or weather modification activity would be opened over the summer. For now, geoengineering is an open scientific question. Experts aren't sure whether or not it will be necessary in the future, or if it could harm the world more than it helps, said James Hurrell, a professor of environmental science and engineering at Colorado State University and an expert on geoengineering. Most importantly, Hurrell said, geoengineering is purely a scientific debate right now. 'There are no geoengineering activities happening in the US. The government is not doing this,' he said. 'No one in the science community is advocating for it at this time. We're simply using models to ask the 'what if questions.' We're trying to understand if this is a scientifically plausible idea or not.' Meanwhile, Florida's bill does nothing to address what climatologists consider the most pressing cause of climate change, which experts say will fuel more weather disasters — the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal. While large-scale geoengineering remains far off, some emerging start-up efforts have been singled out by Republican political leaders. On X, Garcia specifically mentioned a two-man for-profit company called 'Make Sunsets' that has been launching balloons filled with sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere in California and Nevada and selling 'cooling credits' for the sunlight they reflect. The EPA has also targeted this company with regulatory action and social media posts and name-checked them in their recently released fact check on geoengineering. Under Florida's new bill, that activity would not be allowed here. There is no evidence that the company has plans to expand to Florida. Like other recent Florida bills banning offshore wind farms and the sale of lab-grown meat, the bill appears to have been a preemptive strike ahead of any actual activity. Florida's bill would ban another activity that does not appear to take place currently in the state — cloud seeding. For decades, governments have allowed companies to spritz clouds with chemicals like silver iodide to encourage extra snow or rain onto arid fields below, usually at the request of farmers and ranchers. It's common practice in the arid West, including in Texas. That's what triggered the latest social media speculation. Two days before the Texas flash floods, a company called Rainmaker conducted cloud-seeding activities about 100 miles away from Kerr County, where the flooding occurred. The spraying encouraged about half a centimeter of rainfall directly below it, CEO Augustus Doricko told the Washington Post. A few days later, theories began to spread that Rainmaker's activity sparked the floods. Even before Uthmeier waded in, they were echoed by other current and former Republican politicians on X, which Doricko refuted. 'Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region,' Doricko posted on X. 'Rainmaker will always be fully transparent.' Several news outlets, including the Associated Press, CBS News and Snopes, directly debunked the claim via several expert meteorologists. All said that the extra moisture in the air that led to so much rain came from a nearby tropical storm, Barry, and was not the result of any 'cloud seeding' technology. 'That was something that is orders of magnitude more than anything cloud seeding can do,' Hurrell said. A week later, Uthemeier released his letter to Florida airports. 'I can't help but notice the possibility that weather modification could have played a role in this tragedy,' he wrote, citing a Yahoo News article that actually debunked that theory and featured an expert calling it 'scientifically unfounded.'


The Hill
15-07-2025
- The Hill
Florida AG orders airports to report ‘weather modification' activities
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) has ordered all airports in the state to report any geoengineering and ' weather modification ' activities or face penalties. Uthmeier urged all public-use airports in Florida in a Monday letter to adhere to Senate Bill 56, which was signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last month. Violators of the law face third-degree felony charges and a fine as high $100,000. 'Injecting our atmosphere with novel chemical compounds to block the sun is a dangerous path, especially in Florida, where sunshine is our most valuable resource,' Uthmeier said in the letter, the copy of which he shared on the social media platform X. 'Furthermore, as our hearts break for the victims of the flash floods in Texas, I can't help but notice the possibility that weather modification could have played a role in this tragedy.' The law went into effect at the beginning of this month. The legislation bars the intentional release of substances, compounds and chemicals into the atmosphere in hopes of changing the weather, climate and temperature. From Oct. 1 onwards, all operators are required to submit monthly reports to the Florida Department of Transportation disclosing the physical presence of any aircraft on public property, including public-use airports, that have equipment that could be used for either 'weather modification' or geoengineering. Airports could lose state funding if they do not comply, Uthmeier warned in the letter. 'Because airports are most likely to catch those who seek to weaponize science in order to push their agenda, your compliance with these reporting obligations is essential to keeping our state safe from these harmful chemicals and experiments,' the Florida attorney general said. Some states have performed cloud seeding. It is the process of adding small particles, normally silver iodide crystals, to clouds in order to prompt snow or rain, according to the Government Accountability Office. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said earlier this month that she plans to put forward a bill to tackle 'weather modification.' 'I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense,' the Georgia Republican said.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Yahoo
Republicans toe Trump line even in aftermath of deadly Texas floods
The US is reeling after catastrophic floods killed more than 100 people in Texas, including 27 children and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp. On Monday, Democrats asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency's performance. But Republicans' default response has been to express fealty to Donald Trump. They lavished praise on the president for providing federal assistance while studiously avoiding questions around the effect of his 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) or threats to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). 'It is a sign of the sickness and dysfunction of what was the Republican party that they have almost no thoughts about their constituents,' said Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. 'Their thoughts are, how do I avoid making sure that Donald Trump doesn't look at me as an enemy or a critic? 'Despite the fact that the Doge cuts and the reductions in force and the early buyouts have savaged the workforce of the National Weather Service, they can't even utter the slightest vague, elliptical critique of the administration that is now engaged in these cuts that have cost the lives of the people they supposedly represent.' Related: Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding The raging flash floods – among the US's worst in decades – slammed into riverside camps and homes in central Texas before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. Authorities say the death toll is sure to rise as crews look for the many who are still missing. Republicans have long been criticised for responding to mass shootings with 'thoughts and prayers', as if the tragedy transcends politics. Similarly, party leaders have sought to blame a freak act of nature rather than contemplating a potential association with Trump's policies – or with the broader threat of the climate crisis, seemingly a taboo subject under the current administration. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, praised Trump for approving a major disaster declaration that ensured state and local government have more resources to deal with the emergency. 'The swift and very robust action by President Trump is an extraordinary help to our response,' he said. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, tweeted: 'Thank you @POTUS Trump' for the declaration and told Fox News: 'The National Weather Service under President Trump has been working to put in new technology and a new system because it's been neglected for years. It's an ancient system that needed to be upgraded and so President Trump recognised that right away and got to work on it when he came into office in January.' Senator Ted Cruz wrote on the X social media platform that 'President Trump committed ANYTHING Texas needs', while telling a press conference: 'There's a time to have political fights, there's a time to disagree. This is not that time.' Trump himself has struck a similar tone, deflecting questions about whether he is still planning to phase out Fema. He said he does not plan to re-hire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts. The president told reporters on Sunday: 'That water situation, that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. But I wouldn't blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe.' But scrutiny of whether more could have been done to avoid the tragedy is already under way. Texas officials criticised the NWS, arguing that it failed to warn the public about impending danger. The NWS defended its forecasting and emergency management, stating that it assigned extra forecasters to the San Antonio and San Angelo offices over the holiday weekend. But a top leadership role at the NWS's San Antonio office has been vacant since earlier this year after Paul Yura accepted an offer from the Trump administration to retire. Doge, formerly led by the billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been pushing the NWS to cut jobs and gave hundreds of employees the option to retire early rather than face potential dismissal. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, asked the commerce department's acting inspector general to investigate whether staffing vacancies at the NWS's San Antonio office contributed to 'delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy' in forecasting the flooding. Republicans accused Democrats of seeking to politicise the tragedy. Wilson, a political consultant who has worked on numerous campaigns, said: 'It is an ongoing family psychodrama inside the Republican party, where everyone is desperately, deeply afraid that they will put a foot wrong with Donald Trump and that's why there's absolutely no candour with these folks about what has happened to the people they represent.' Some commentators suggest that Republicans will ultimately pay a political price for their blind devotion and for last week passing Trump's cost-cutting Big, Beautiful Act. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: 'It's a vision of the future because every time there is something tragic that happens, not just a natural disaster but a mass shooting or you fill in the blank, somebody is going to find a connection to these deep cuts in government engineered by Trump and Musk. 'I think Trump and the Republicans need to get used to this. It may not hurt Trump, but it could potentially and should hurt some of the members of Congress from competitive states and districts that voted for the BBB.'