The extreme drought has lowered levels in Lake Travis to the point where rice farmers downstream may soon be cut off.
Who deserves water more? The first one in line, or the one who stands to lose the most financially if it’s taken away? That’s one way of looking at the ongoing “water war” on the Lower Colorado River between rice farmers in Southeast Texas and residents and businesses along the Highland Lakes upstream from them. Caught in the middle? The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which manages the water in the lakes. Today they are voting on a water plan that would change how water is managed on the river.
The plan would add a second cutoff date to determine whether there’s enough water for rice farmers downstream, which would likely mean more years without water from the lakes for the farmers. The farmers will likely not get water this spring because of low lake levels. “In the future, farmers will have to grow more pounds per acre on more marginal land, it looks like with less water,” longtime rice farmer Billy Mann testified during public comment on the plan Tuesday. “Can we do it? We’re going to have to, but hopefully we will have the water there for us.”
Residents and businesses on the Highland Lakes have been pushing for changing how water is used and paid for on the Lower Colorado. “I got to tell you, it’s really hard for me to be speaking here today, because we are staring down the devastation of the drought of 2011,” Janet Caylor of the Central Texas Water Coalition said. “And as y’all are aware, there have already been multiple bankruptcies, loss of jobs; many are struggling to stay in business.” Continue Reading →
Photo Courtesy of romanm Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Petrolkoks_IMG_6166.jpg
The plant was going to be fired by petroleum coke, pictured above.
A petroleum coke power plant planned near the Gulf Coast community of Point Comfort has lost its permit to build, according to environmental groups. Petroleum coke is a fossil fuel used like coal.
Today the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and The Sustainable Energy and Economic Development [SEED] Coalition released a statement saying that the Joslin power plant was required to begin construction by February 20th or its air permit would be voided and plant builders would have to reapply.
“[The Plant builders] have exhausted their time line for extending on their permitting, so their time is finally up with the TCEQ.” Karen Hadden, Executive Director of the SEED coalition, told StateImpact Texas. “It seems that the company is more likely looking at a natural gas plant at this time which would have much less pollutants.” Continue Reading →
Photo credit should read PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
With fishing license sales down, budgets to stock rivers and lakes are being stretched thin.
David Barer, an intern at StateImpact Texas, researched and reported this article.
Derrick Schmalz is lifetime angler who grew up fishing on the Llano River with his grandfather. When it comes to fishing in his home state, he can’t help but show a little Texas pride.
“I’ve fished all over the country, and Texas has one of the best license programs in the nation,” said Schmalz. “Buying a fishing license is a small price to pay to go fishing and enjoy so many of the great resources the state has to offer.”
Schmalz and anglers like him owe some of the pleasure they take from hours on the water to state programs that stock fish in Texas lakes and rivers. But funding for those programs, like the rest of Texas Parks and Wildlife budget, is drying up at an alarming rate.
Sales of fishing licenses are the most important income for the state fish hatcheries, and sales in 2011 were down compared to previous years. Continue Reading →
Carbon dioxide will be captured and piped to an oilfield
In past years, the W. A. Parish power plant outside Houston in Fort Bend County has ranked near the top of national lists for “Most Polluting Power Plants.” It has also been lauded for it’s efforts to reduce emissions.
Now, this power behemoth, the biggest power plant in Texas and second biggest fossil fuel-burning plant in the nation, is planning to build one of the country’s more innovative pollution control projects. It will use some of its pollution to pump oil out of the ground.
Plant owner NRG said it will begin construction next year of its “carbon capture” system. The system, made up of  pipes and flues and sprayers, will be installed on one of the plant’s four coal-burning power generation units (four other units burn natural gas).
“This will be the first commercial-scale carbon capture on a power plant in the United States,” said Jeff Baudier, CEO of Petra Nova, NRG’s wholly-owned carbon capture business.
The agency that controls the water flowing from the Highland Lakes to the Gulf Coast is set to approve a new Water Management Plan on Tuesday. But before it makes a final decision, it will hear from the various – often feuding – communities who all rely on the river to support their way of life. None of those groups appear fully supportive of the plan as it has been amended.
The plan offers some new ways for the LCRA to manage the type of extreme drought we’ve seen in the last year. For one thing, lake levels in the Highland Lakes would be checked twice a year to gauge if there’s enough water to send downstream to rice farmers in South Texas. Continue Reading →
Spicewood Beach resident L.J. Honeycutt says his plan is to "drink less water and drink more beer"
Seizures of land and seizures of the heart. This week on StateImpact Texas, we looked at why a Texas town ran dry (and who could be next), how pipeline companies are using eminent domain to take over private land, and what a Masterpiece Theatre television show set in the past can teach us about the future. In case you missed any of them, here are the top five new stories from StateImpact Texas over the last week:
Defending the Keystone XL Pipeline:Â We sat down recently to speak with Jim Prescott, a project representative for TransCanada, about the company’s views on the pipeline.
Photo by Flickr user Stuck in Customs/Creative Commons
Pipeline companies are finding themselves with a new obstacle: defenders of private property rights.
There’s a showdown taking place over a fifty-foot wide swath of farmland in northeast Texas, and the outcome could have a significant effect on the future of the Keystone XL pipeline and how it’s perceived by the public.
As we reported last week, the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, has won an eminent domain claim to route the pipeline through the farmland of Julia Trigg Crawford, who decided not to allow the company to construct the pipeline through her land. While Crawford is appealing that eminent domain claim, she has also filed a temprorary restraining order against TransCanada that for the time being bars them from entering her property. Now TransCanada is asking for that restraining order to be dissolved.
On Friday, a district judge in Lamar County held a hearing on Crawford’s restraining order. Both sides had their say in a session that started at nine and didn’t end until three in the afternoon. “It was a crazy, crazy wild day,” Crawford says. The company says Crawford and her attorneys “violated state law by seeking a temporary restraining order without our knowledge,” according to a statement by the company. The judge will make a ruling on whether or not to dissolve the temprorary restraining order sometime this week.
While much of the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has come from environmental corners, the case of the pipeline versus the farmer illustrates a new obstacle for the company: defenders of private property rights. Continue Reading →
UT graduate student Mary Clayton has come up with an innovative approach for using wind to power desalination
Texas’ energy problems seem to be piling up more and more each day. The electric grid is strained, the drought persists (although things have improved), and alternative energy and water production models come across as financially and logistically difficult to implement in the middle of a recession. But with these myriad problems also comes the opportunity for innovation.
One graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) is an example of that innovation. Mary Clayton, has come up with a model that may help Texas overcome both its water and electricity problems in one fell swoop. The plan involves using wind energy produced at night to power desalination of brackish ground water in West Texas. Recently some lawmakers have incorporated desalination into their energy reform policies, yet many have criticized it as a costly and energy-intensive process. But what if there was a way to use excess wind to power it?
Windy nights, copious brackish ground water, and high levels of drought make West Texas towns like Lubbock, Abilene, and Midland the perfect location for such an experiment. Clayton, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Mechanical Engineering, presented these findings at a recent symposium of the Webber Energy Group, an interdisciplinary research group at UT that focuses on energy problems. Their goal is to bridge the gap between engineering, science, and the general public. Clayton recently sat down with me to discuss her solution for making desalination affordable and renewable.
Q: Can you give us a basic explanation of your plan?
A: My research looks at using wind power for brackish ground water desalination in West Texas. Cities are running out of water and are going to have to be turning to new water sources such as desalination. But an issue with that is that it’s a very energy-intensive process, which is kind of counterproductive to our goal of reducing emissions. So one way to deal with that is to use wind power. The opposite side of that is that we’re increasing our wind installations [but] wind is mostly available at night when we don’t need it. So a solution to that is energy storage or some sort of technology that can use the power at night less intermittently. So one of our big ideas is, instead of energy storage, why not use water desalination? And that solves two problems. Continue Reading →
Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece Theatre television show from across the pond, has captured the hearts and fashion sense of many Americans this year. People have fallen in love with the period piece for its drama, romance and history, but the show may also provide a glimpse into our energy future and provide lessons for how to best adapt to major innovations in energy and technology.
In case you’re one of the few people left on earth who haven’t fallen in love with the show, Downton Abbey tells the story of a rich family that lives in a castle (the “Abbey” of the title) during World War I. While dealing with the intricacies and politics of inheritance, servile romance and afternoon tea, the characters of the show also have to adapt to a time of rapid innovation.
Telephones, automobiles and electricity all make their way into the world of Downton Abbey during the show, and the at times feeble response of the characters to these new technologies is part of its charm. “First electricity, now telephones,” Violet the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the matriarch of the family says in the first season. “Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an HG Wells novel. But the young are all so calm about change, aren’t they?”
But while Downton Abbey is an affectionate look at the past, the show may actually tell us something about the future of electricity and the best way to adapt to it. Continue Reading →
Scott Anderson says there are many environmental risks associated with fracking.
A report from UT’s Energy Institute on shale gas drilling found no link between hydraulic fracturing and water contamination, but the findings might not all be good news for oil and gas drilling.
“The report shines a light on the fact that there are a number of aspects of natural gas development that can cause significant environmental risk,” Scott Anderson, a policy advisor for the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that contributed to the study, told StateImpact Texas.
While the study found no direct link between water contamination and fracking itself, it did cite surface spills of fracturing chemicals as a risk to groundwater. It also found blowouts underground during fracking operations have been under-reported. In a blog post yesterday, Anderson enumerated some other continuing concerns.
Late last year the EPA released a draft report on the effects of fracking in Pavillion, Wyoming that appeared to find a link between fracking and water contamination. Continue Reading →
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