The Sierra Club In Texas

Background

The Sierra Club is a national environmental protection group with local chapters across the nation. Founded in 1892, the club serves as a watchdog for clean air, pro-environmental land use, environmental sustainability in trade and renewable energy. The organization’s current focus is on “climate recovery” by cutting coal usage, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants and squaring away land to restore natural habitats. The Sierra Club is a nonpartisan organization that supports pro-environmental candidates for office. The club also organizes free outdoor recreational activities including, conservation walks, hikes, cycling or skiing.

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club represents approximately 24,000 Texans and 10 regional groups from Big Bend to Houston. The Texas Chapter focuses on public parks, public transit, smog reduction and water conservation. Advocacy and education efforts center on several of the chapter’s environmental priorities: Beyond Coal to Clean Energy, Clean Energy Solutions, Green Transportation, Safeguarding Communities: Clean Air & Water, A Texas Land & Wildlife Legacy and Water for People & the Environment.

Austin’s Regional Sierra Club has listed water conservation and water quality as one of its priorities. Other local priorities include improved transportation, the Longhorn Pipeline and an anti-Fox News coalition called Fox Attacks. The regional branch also supports the Global Population and Environment Program, which argues for public health family-planning initiatives across the world.

In June 2011, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in conjunction with Environment Texas against ExxonMobil in Houston for violating the Clean Air Act.

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July 10, 2014

You May Want to Slow Your Coal Roll in Texas

The world is warming, and there’s heated debate over what to do about it, or if it’s even warming at all. (Hint: It is.) Amidst this debate, some opponents of government regulations and environmental policy have taken up protest by retrofitting their diesel trucks to spew billowing clouds of black, noxious smoke. When the soot gets […]

May 12, 2014

Lawmakers Again Consider Overhauling How Pollution Permits Are Fought

It’s a familiar story. A factory, a power plant, or maybe a landfill wants to open in Texas. People who live nearby worry about pollution, and protest the project. Their challenge goes to the State Office of Administrative Hearings and, eventually, to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Business groups have wanted to overhaul that process […]

April 30, 2014

Sierra Club Worried about Precedent from Nuclear Waste Site Ruling

From KXWT: A state appeals court has again upheld a radioactive waste license for a storage site in Andrews County. The site is owned and operated by Waste Control Specialists, and it’s been at the middle of a series of legal challenges from the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. We recently spoke with the Sierra Club’s Conservation Director Cyrus Reed, who […]

April 16, 2014

Court Thwarts Sierra Club’s Radioactive Waste Challenge

From the Texas Tribune: A state appeals court has thwarted a challenge to a low-level radioactive waste disposal site in West Texas – a ruling that signals growing difficulties for those trying to scrutinize the decisions of Texas environmental regulators. Depending on whom you ask, such a trend would either rightly save companies time and money or […]

November 5, 2013

How Prop 6 Passed, and What’s Up Next for Water Projects in Texas

Texans overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment Tuesday to jump-start financing for water projects in the state: Proposition 6. The plan will take $2 billion in surplus state money (from the Rainy Day Fund) to start a low-interest loan program for water projects in Texas. The measure had widespread support from both sides of the aisle as well as business […]

November 1, 2013

If Proposition 6 Passes, What Comes Next for Water in Texas?

The idea you’re voting on Tuesday would take billions of state dollars to fund water projects in Texas. But the devil’s in the details.

October 31, 2013

Meet the Unlikely Allies Behind the Push for Prop 6, Texas’ Water Fund

Strange Bedfellows Found in Opposition As Well

October 23, 2013

More than Prayer: How Prop 6 Aims to Improve Water Supplies in Texas

Update: Prop 6 passed. Read the full story here. 2011 was the driest year in Texas’ recorded history — crops failed, herds were sold off and lakes and reservoirs literally went dry. Some communities, like Spicewood Beach in the Hill Country or Robert Lee in West Texas, had to scramble to find new water supplies. And in […]

September 20, 2013

A Changing Market and Dim Future for Coal in Texas

Amid the continued decline in coal power in the state, Texas’ largest power generator is asking the state for permission to idle another of its coal power units this winter. And new federal regulations proposed today make it unlikely that many new coal power plants will be built in the foreseeable future. Luminant, a division of the […]

July 26, 2013

Texas Attorney General Loses Round in Ongoing Battle With Federal Government

What does Texas Attorney General (and now candidate for Governor) Greg Abbott like to do for fun? “What I really do for fun is I go into the office,” Abbott said at a speech last year, “[and] I sue the Obama adminstration.” Abbott has been openly bragging on the campaign trail of his many lawsuits against […]