Jim Wells water plant firm eyes new Coastal Bend supply project

Jim Wells County’s biggest water question is no longer whether South Texas needs more supply. It is whether the Alice plant and the next wave of Coastal Bend projects can deliver enough reliability soon enough to matter for homes, farms and local industry.

That tension framed the Nueces Basin Water Summit at the Portland Community Center, where water experts, engineers, government officials and technology companies gathered to discuss treatment, conservation and new supply options for the region. The summit ran June 15-16, although registration materials also listed June 15-17, a reminder that the basin’s water planning has become broad, complicated and still unfinished.

For Alice, the discussion was especially close to home. Seven Seas Water Group, which built the reverse osmosis plant in the city, is now working with the South Texas Water Authority on a proposed Chapman Ranch project. Rosanna Ramirez, Seven Seas’ Texas business development director, said the company had already presented the proposal to Corpus Christi city leaders and said it could eventually bring between 10 million and 20 million gallons a day.

The Alice plant itself is already part of the region’s working water system. Seven Seas says the brackish-water reverse osmosis facility was designed for an initial capacity of 2.7 million gallons per day, delivers 2.7 million gallons a day of raw water to the city, and will transfer to Alice after 15 years under a build-own-operate-transfer contract. The company says it was the first public-private brackish-water partnership of its kind in Texas. Local reporting has put the plant’s cost at about $50 million and said it is saving Alice about $2 million a year.

The broader Coastal Bend push is moving on several fronts. Seven Seas and the South Texas Water Authority broke ground on a separate brackish-water reverse osmosis project near Driscoll on July 8, 2025, with officials from Nueces County, Kleberg County, local municipalities and regional stakeholders on hand. Regional planning documents list that STWA-Seven Seas project among the supply strategies in the Draft 2026 Coastal Bend Regional Water Plan.

Still, the path from summit talk to water in the pipe remains uneven. Local reporting showed Corpus Christi leaders questioning the groundwater deal over incomplete studies and redacted documents, while the same project was described as one that could expand from 3 million gallons a day to 30 million gallons a day. The Nueces River Authority, created in 1935 and given broad authority over water-supply and water-quality issues in the basin, now sits at the center of decisions that will shape whether the Coastal Bend gets affordable, dependable water in time to support growth.