Residents urge council to delay Port of Corpus Christi solar farm permit as public hearing draws dozens

Dozens of residents urged the Ingleside City Council on Jan. 28 to deny or postpone a Port of Corpus Christi request for a special use permit to install a large, utility-scale solar farm on the McCampbell tract.

Speakers at the public hearing said the proposed project would cover wetlands that provide drainage and habitat and that the community learned of the proposal only recently. “I ask that you vote no or at least table it for a long time,” resident Martha Hoblitzel told the council. Ashley Griffith, who said she is a fourth-generation resident, told council members, “This is my home. I too worry about the generational long term effects of this.”

The Port’s representative, Sam Esquivel, director of real estate for the Port of Corpus Christi, described the application as a request for a grid-tied solar panel array on roughly 1,800 acres of port-owned property (the McCampbell tract is roughly 2,800 acres). He said the parcel proposed for rezoning under the special use permit is slightly more than 1,200 acres and that the port has an active U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit application related to fill and wetland mitigation. Esquivel said the port is not requesting battery storage in the permit…