Texas Rep. Cody Harris stands in his office in Palestine on Thursday, July 31, 2025. Rep. Harris is proposing to overhaul the state’s “Right to Capture” law.

Texas is staring down a water crisis, and Corpus Christi is ground zero — where politicians cater to global corporations while billionaires look to cash in on scarcity.

Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to yank state funding this week after Corpus Christi’s City Council scrapped a wildly over-budget desalination plant meant to turn seawater into refinery fuel. City officials say taxpayers can’t afford it; industry insists it can’t survive without it.

Across Texas, cities and businesses are scrambling for water. Demand is expected to grow 120% as the state’s population reaches 51 million by 2070, the Texas Water Development Board predicted. Nearly half of those Texans will live in Houston or Dallas.

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This spring, the Texas Legislature set aside $1 billion a year for water, for the next 20 years, split evenly between new supply projects, like pipelines and desalination plants, and repairing aging infrastructure.

But a Texas 2036........

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