As the sun set Thursday night, over 50 Galveston County residents filed into the Bacliff Volunteer Fire Department for a town hall meeting on a subject that has turned a lot of heads in a small community over the past few months.
The meeting centered on a proposed seawater desalination plant potentially being built in Texas City, near Galveston Bay.
Canadian-based utility company,EPCOR Utilities Inc., is seeking a permit to build a desalination plant that would help with water security in the region. The plant would remove salt and minerals from seawater to produce 24.5 million gallons of drinking water a day to a region that’s home to nearly 8 million residents, according to theutility company.
The Bayshore Town Square community group,which represents unincorporated areas in Galveston County near the site of the proposedBayshore Desalination Facility, held the town hall after hearing concerns from residents about the effects the plant could have on marine life and people who live nearby. EPCOR representatives joined the meeting to answer questions.
Bayshore-area resident Gina Smith helped lead the town hall meeting. She is one of three people who run the Bayshore Town Square community group and lives right on Galveston Bay. Smith said she worries about the environmental impact of the proposed plant, including how it could impact the water line as well as marine life by adding salinity to the water.
"I have a lot of concerns still," Smith said after Thursday's meeting. "It’s a privilege to see dolphins in the morning ... and I want my daughter to be able to have that. It wasn’t always like that here."
EPCOR filed a discharge permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in October 2025, which is a required step for the state’s approval to develop and operate the seawater desalination facility near the south shore of Galveston Bay.
EPCOR officials have repeatedly assured residents that the plant would have aminimal impact on the environment.According to EPCOR, one study on the proposed plant found that the company’s excess saltwater from the treatment process has little to no effect on waters within half a mile of entering the open bay. The second study found that the discharge’s average salinity level falls within the optimal range for species such as fish, oysters, crab and shrimp to thrive.
"We are working to make sure that the project has as minimal impact as possible, but can provide this new reliable water supply," said EPCOR's Michael Irlbeck, who came to Thursday's meeting to answer questions.
Irlbeck mentioned that the increased water current from the plant's intake and output channels, and the solids that the company would take out of the saltwater to clean it, could help people who are fishing in the area.
"I would guess the tidal dam is going to get a lot more popular for fishing because you’re going to have a constant, sustained flow that will be a little bit clearer than what’s in the bay," Irlbeck said.
Bayshore-area resident Bill Wells, who regularly attends the Bayshore Town Square community group's monthly meetings, said he felt reassured after hearing what EPCOR officials had to say. Coming in, his biggest concern was how the plant could affect fishing in Dickinson Bay.
"It doesn’t sound like the impact is going to be horrible, which is what I was worried about, but it sounds like it could, in fact, improve the Dickinson Bay estuary somewhat," Wells said.
Others, like Smith, still felt uncertain after the meeting, especially after she said residents did not get notice about the proposed plant until a few months ago.
"How is that possible? I don’t understand that," Smith said. "If these politicians knew two years ago, why did they know and why didn’t they come and tell us about it? I need to understand that information."
Irlbeck apologized for any late notice about the proposed project.
"We did make an effort to inform the public at the beginning of October [2025]. That’s when we decided to start talking about the project,” Irlbeck said.
Irlbeck said the company started looking at the project in 2024 and began approaching elected officials and government officials, including the Galveston County judge and commissioners, about the project at the beginning of 2025.
Bayshore-area residents attend a town hall to ask questions and voice concerns about a proposed Bayshore Desalination Facility near Galveston Bay on March 26, 2026.
Smith mentioned that the Bayshore Town Square community group would host another meeting about the subject so they could get more information. She said she would still like a straight answer about the tangible environmental impacts the plant would have.
"There’s something that changes in the environment and I don’t think it’s fair to say to us that it changes nothing," Smith said. "There is a water issue that’s happening. We need to address that issue. We need to do it in the safest way possible ... you can’t just throw away your community because you need water. You’ve got to make a choice about what works and what doesn’t work and we need to think hard about it."
Spokesperson for EPCOR, Matthew Atwood, said the company is waiting on TCEQ’s review of the permit the company submitted back in October 2025. In a presentation, Irlbeck said they expect a TCEQ draft permit for review and public comment by summer 2026, construction on the plant to begin in 2028 and operation to begin in 2031.
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