For two years, John Byrum sold South Texas on a big idea. A small river authority based in Uvalde would build a 100-million-gallon-a-day seawater desalination plant on Harbor Island. The river authority’s board president, Eric Burnett, has called the future facility the largest plant of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
Now Byrum is leaving before construction has started, and days before his board is scheduled to discuss his job behind closed doors.
KRIS 6 News has reported several setbacks for the project this year. Design work on its pipeline stopped after the engineering firm ran through its contract. Byrum said federal money was coming, but no commitment has been made. And in June, the agency’s chief financial officer confirmed that money for the project could run out by the end of August unless more payments came in.
The project is tied to a regional water shortage. This spring, the city of Corpus Christi said a persistent drought could trigger a water emergency in a region of more than 500,000 people, where oil refineries and petrochemical plants would also face cuts. City leaders have since said recent rains pushed that date back to September 2027. Regional water planners project the area will need roughly double its current water supply within a decade, a gap the Harbor Island project is meant to help address.
Corpus Christi agreed in October 2025 to pay the river authority $2.7 million to reserve 50 million gallons a day from the plant. As of July, 18 cities and water supply corporations across South and Central Texas had paid fees to hold a place in line. Corpus Christi’s own, separate desalination project in the Inner Harbor has stalled. In early September, the City Council voted 5-3 against a design contract for the roughly $979 million plant.
The Nueces River Authority announced Wednesday that Byrum will retire as executive director Oct. 31. The agenda for Friday’s board meeting includes a closed session on the “evaluation, duties, discipline, employment, reassignment, or dismissal” of the executive director, followed by possible action in open session. Deputy Director John Chisholm will serve as interim executive director, pending action by the board.
On Wednesday, the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality approved the Port of Corpus Christi Authority’s offshore discharge permit for the Harbor Island desalination project, a permit it helped secure for the NRA.
A release from the agency credits Byrum with securing a $7 million state grant for the Harbor Island desalination project and with completing the Leakey Wastewater Treatment Plant. Leakey is a small Hill Country town about 35 miles north of Uvalde and 90 miles northwest of San Antonio.
The Texas Water Development Board approved that $7 million grant in August. The river authority had written the money into its proposed budget before the state voted on it. The water board told KRIS 6 in August that Gov. Greg Abbott had directed it to award funding to the river authority for planning at Harbor Island.
The state’s grant memo says the river authority will be responsible for building the pipeline that would carry Harbor Island water to customers. But, near Leakey, where the agency already built and operates a smaller sewer system, homeowners in the Twin Forks subdivision say work the agency agreed to in 2015 still isn’t finished.
“Our big question is, if the NRA can’t handle a very small and simple project, how are they going to handle the water crisis issues we also face in the Coastal Bend,” Twin Forks property owner Robert Michael Perkins Jr. wrote in a text message to KRIS 6 News on Tuesday.
Running short on money
Cities and water districts have paid the river authority $4.1 million in reservation fees for the desalinated water, which Byrum has said will cost about $6.4 billion. The fees are non-refundable and do not count toward future water purchases. If the plant is never built, the money is not returned.
Except for Corpus Christi, which paid up front, customers must renew their reservations each year. In June, Chisholm told the board that three customers had been billed and had not paid. By early August, three reservation contracts had expired and had not been renewed, KRIS 6 reported.
The river authority cannot levy a property tax. Its annual budget is up to about $5 million, and it earns money by charging for services, such as operating water systems for small cities. As five of those contracts ended and grants dried up, the agency relied on the reservation fees to pay its bills, KRIS 6 reported in July. In May, the board moved 75% of Byrum’s salary onto the desalination budget.
At a June 25 board meeting, board member Dan Suckley said the agency could be out of desalination money by the end of August. Chief Financial Officer Robin Murray confirmed that was true unless more payments came in. In a July letter to the board, State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa wrote that, based on the agency’s bank records, its general operating and desalination accounts could not cover salaries and other recurring costs for more than a few months without new revenue. Byrum told KRIS 6 he was not worried and said the agency could borrow its way forward if needed.
The $7 million grant followed those warnings. When the river authority’s board met Aug. 14, the proposed 2027 budget already included the grant. Financial records showed without that grant, the agency would be more than $6 million in the hole for 2027.
The water board met Aug. 24. The grant was the only item on its agenda that required a vote, and the board approved it. According to a water board staff memo, the grant pays for early work on the first phase of the pipeline that would carry desalinated water from Harbor Island to customers.
Byrum told a public audience in April that a $2.5 billion “big ask” had been made to President Donald Trump for the project. KRIS 6 could not confirm with the White House that any request had been made. Byrum later said the Port of Corpus Christi made the request. Port CEO Kent Britton said the port never made an official request for $2.5 billion tied to the river authority’s project.
In March, the river authority’s then-chief operating officer, Travis Pruski, accused Byrum in a letter to the board of presenting inaccurate water sales figures, telling staff not to speak with board members and jeopardizing a $30 million flood mitigation grant. Byrum declined to comment at the time, citing personnel matters. In May, Burnett said an outside investigation found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing by Byrum. Pruski resigned at that meeting. The river authority has declined to release the investigation report to KRIS 6, and the Texas attorney general’s office has ruled it can be withheld.
Abbott appoints all 21 members of the river authority’s board. His office has said the board is responsible for the agency’s finances. His office asked the attorney general for permission to withhold its own communications with Byrum and Burnett, and the attorney general’s office ruled this week that those records do not have to be released.
Questions about water testing
The river authority also collects monthly drinking water samples for about eight small water systems across South Texas and sends them to labs for testing. In 2024, Corpus Christi Water, which was testing some of those samples, noticed a form signed by someone it believed no longer worked for the river authority and reported its concerns to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
State rules require anyone who collects drinking water samples to hold a water operator license from the TCEQ. A KRIS 6 review of city and river authority records found that 41 of the 103 sampling forms the river authority submitted in 2024 had problems. Some listed collectors who did not hold that license, some listed employees who had already left the agency, and some were signed by people who did not collect the samples.
The records showed Byrum’s name listed as the sampler on 25 forms in the summer of 2024. Byrum holds a water and wastewater license, but he told KRIS 6 he does not collect samples in his job at the river authority. He declined to answer when asked whether he signed those forms.
In May, a former river authority employee, Marisa Juarez, was indicted on 10 felony counts of tampering with a government record. Nueces County District Attorney Jimmy Granberry said last year that there was no indication anyone was harmed.
What happens Friday
The board meets at 10 a.m. Friday in Robstown, where it is scheduled to discuss Byrum’s job in closed session. The agenda also includes a briefing from Byrum on “flood-related infrastructure damage” in Twin Forks and a second subdivision, Camino Alto, following recent flooding in Leakey.
Perkins said property owners met last weekend and that representatives from Twin Forks plan to attend.
“Eleven years is long enough,” he wrote in his letter.
