Several pipelines run underneath the Dona Park neighborhood in Corpus Christi.
What’s it like growing up surrounded by refineries in Corpus Christi?
A commenter on one of our stories about Refinery Row, Iris Gonzales Hinojosa, writes about her childhood among the refinery stacks:
“I grew up in Dona park, specifically on Vernon Drive, and many of my childhood memories include Mom and Dad, closing our home’s windows to run the air conditions because breathing the air was so unbearable. Continue Reading →
Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist
Curious about what state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon has to say about some towns in Texas running out of water? StateImpact Texas put in a call:
Q: StateImpact Texas: There’s this list by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) of towns that are running out of water. Some of them even have a date of a few weeks from now when they’ll run out. Is that possible?
A: John Nielsen-Gammon, State Climatologist: The deadline is a worst case scenario, because the odds of zero rainfall are near zero. The specific dates are pretty good for attention-grabbing, but they’re not realistic projections of when they’ll actually run out of water.
A statue stands in front of the remnants of a burned down home outside Bastrop, Texas.
They are numbers familiar to us by now: billions in losses, millions of acres burned, record high temperatures, and record low rainfall during our current drought.
Some towns in Texas are now asking the big question: How long do we have until we run out of water?
“We haven’t had that situation yet,” says Andrea Morrow, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). “There hasn’t been a scenario yet where someone’s completely run out.”
Mounds of coal at the Coleto Creek power plant in Fannin, Texas
When it comes to using coal to make electricity in Texas, groups opposed to what they call “dirty coal” say they almost always lose when they try to convince state regulators to deny proposed plants permission to operate. But while they’ve lost some battles, are they actually winning the war? Continue Reading →
Demonstrators protest the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House on November 6, 2011
Environmental groups that have opposed the Keystone XL pipeline won something of a victory yesterday, when the Obama administration announced that it would delay a decision on the project.
But that announcement raised more questions than it answered. Will the pipeline’s delay ultimately kill the project altogether? Will other sections of the pipeline (like the Oklahoma-to-Gulf Coast section) be able to go forward separately? Will another company, like Enbridge, pick up where TransCanada left off, but build a pipeline that bypasses the U.S. altogether?
Add to that list a new question: Is the pipeline delay actually a setback for green energy?: Continue Reading →
A view of the Flint Hills East Refinery from the Hillcrest Neighborhood in Corpus Christi
Tammy Foster is leading a group of residents trying to leave the neighborhood.
A flare erupts from a refinery stack in Corpus Christi
An Abandoned Playground in the Hillcrest Neighborhood
One of many boarded-up houses in the Hillcrest neighborhood, which sits next to the Citgo and Flint Hills refineries.
How do you get eminent domain in Texas? Just check a box.
A sofa sits outside the Citgo East refinery in what was once the Oak Park Triangle neighborhood. 288 homes here were bought out by oil companies in the late nineties.
Holding tanks on refinery row
There are Of the six major refiThere are six major refineries in the area. The EPA has flagged five of them for serious or repeated violations of the Clean Air Act
Tammy Foster is a lifetime resident of Refinery Row in Corpus Christi. After years of living surrounded by refineries and smoke stacks, she says many of the families there are sick. Now she’s leading a group of residents who think they’ve found a way to fix that.
Map of the Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline/Stephanie d’Otreppe, NPR
The State Department made it official today — the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada through the U.S. to refineries on the Gulf Coast, will not be happening anytime soon. Continue Reading →
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has granted its first greenhouse gas emission permit to a Texas facility since the Federal Agency took over the permitting program from the state.
The Lower Colorado River Authority’s Thomas C. Ferguson Power Plant in Llano County is the first Texas site to be awarded a permit to emit under the new system. The power plant will run on natural gas. Continue Reading →
Barack Obama speaks at the White House on October 6, 2011
Reuters is reporting that the rumors we’ve been hearing about this week — a delay on a decision for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline — may be true. The Obama administration may announce that they’ll explore a different route for the pipeline, “delaying a final approval beyond the 2012 U.S. election.” More from Reuters:
The decision would be a victory for environmentalists, many of whom oppose the pipeline, and a setback for TransCanada Corp, whose $7 billion Keystone XL project is seen as the most important North American oil pipeline plan for decades.
One source familiar with the matter said that studying a new route for the pipeline would likely take 12-18 months, putting a final decision after President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election on November 6, 2012.
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s memory lapse at the GOP debate last night ( the now infamous moment when he couldn’t remember the third Federal Agency he would dismantle if he were president) was especially surprising considering the nature of his candidacy.
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