For years, critics of how Texas enforces environmental regulations have charged that polluters didn’t pay enough when caught, that it was cheaper for big corporations to pay the fine than obey the law.
But the newest member appointed to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Toby Baker, said changes made by the state legislature are putting more bite in enforcement. Continue Reading →
As Texas legislators continue to grapple with how to identify and fund water project priorities for the state, Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) makes the argument that Texans don’t value water enough. His comments came at StateImpact Texas’ panel: The Texas Water Crisis: Finding and Funding a Solution.
As a representative of a district that has struggled during the state’s dry years, Darby said, his region’s problem wasn’t as much not having enough reservoirs but that there’s not enough water in them. The large O.H. Ivie reservoir, which serves San Angelo, a city of nearly 100,000 people, is only 14 percent full. And the other reservoirs the city relies on, like Twin Buttes and O.C. Fisher, are sitting empty.
We’re “reservoir-rich, but water-poor,” Darby said. His solution? For one, he says Texans — especially those living in the very dry parts of the state — will need to value water higher, and in turn pay more for it. You can watch his remarks in the video above, produced by Filipa Rodrigues of KUT News.
State Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) is a founding member of the Eagle Ford Shale Legislative Caucus.
The way State Senator Judith Zaffirini tells it, the idea first came from a constituent.
The Laredo Democrat was hosting a legislative summit in her hometown when “somebody just rose from the audience during a Q&A and suggested this.”
And so the Eagle Ford Shale Legislative Caucus was born.
As most Texans know by now, new drilling technology has spurred an unprecedented oil and gas boom across the South Texas Eagle Ford shale formation. Zaffirini’s bi-partisan group of over 20 state Senators and Representatives hopes to guide that transformation.
The group held its first formal event at the old State Supreme Court Chambers Wednesday at the Capitol.
The former Vice President's new book goes beyond climate change to look at how current trends will shape a future he believes will be radically different from today.
We’re sitting on the edge of a massive global transformation, where robots, globalization, consumption and pollution will all intersect to create a world that’s unlike anything humanity has every known, Former Vice President Al Gore argues in his new book, the aptly-titled ‘The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.’
We spoke with the former Vice President Tuesday by phone to get his thoughts on the oil and gas fracking boom, the ticking clock of climate change, and some of the positive developments that may await us.
Q: We are both enjoying, and in part stressing about, a domestic drilling boom that we have right now, especially here in Texas. And we’re seeing a lot more natural gas and oil coming from our own shores, which is already having an effect on power plant emissions. Just the other week in Texas we saw one of the last remaining coal plants in the works for the state get suspended because the company went out of business. Right after that, a different company announced a new natural-gas-fired plant. But in your book, you argue there’s a downside to the fracking boom that’s allowing us to move from coal to natural gas.
A: Yes, so there are benefits because natural gas has approximately half of the Co2 content produced, compared to coal. So, in theory, it can be a bridge to a future dominated by renewable energy, but there are several problems. First of all, there are parts of Texas that are short on water, and each new fracking well, on average, needs about six million gallons of water. There have been, unfortunately, examples of underground water aquifers being poisoned in the process; the industry says that it’s safe, and minimizes those problems, but George P. Mitchell of Texas, who really invented the whole technology over decades, has called for very strict regulation.
State Senator John Carona has filed legislation that would prevent money from being diverted from the System Benefit Fund. That fund's original purpose was to help low income and senior citizens to pay their electric bills.
If the $850 million in the System Benefit Fund still sits idle come 2014, it won’t be for a lack of trying to fix it.
State Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) filed two bills recently related to the massive, unused benefit fund. One of those bills would realign the fund with its originally intended purpose, to help low income and senior citizens pay their utility bills.
It has been years since the fund has helped pay utility bills and educate ratepayers, as StateImpact Texas reported in November. Today, it sits and collects money through a small fee collected from electric customers in deregulated areas. Its main function has become serving as a crutch to help lawmakers balance the budget.
Texas lawmakers are looking beyond just reservoirs to find water for a thirsty, growing state.
John Nielson-Gammon, Texas’ State Climatologist, offered a grim forecast to kick off a joint House and Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting today at the Capitol.
“There’s still a good chance this will end up being the drought of record for most of the state,” he said.
Several officials from state agencies involved with Texas’ water testified at the meeting, and almost all of them found common ground in their concern for conservation and the development of new technologies, such as reuse, to increase the state’s water reserves.
Robert Lee Mayor John Jacobs looking out over the dry EV Spence reservoir in West Texas in Spring 2011. His town built a pipeline to avoid running out of water.
If you happened to be in Austin last Monday, you may have noticed a sight that would have been strangely unfamiliar just two years ago: three Republican state lawmakers, calling in unison for more spending, higher prices and more restrictions for water.
It represents a real about-face for the Republican majority in Texas. Last legislative session, the focus was on cutting spending and abortion and immigration, but not water. Despite dry times in 2009, with extreme drought in parts of the state, and the onset of the record one-year drought in the fall of 2010, in the last legislative session, lawmakers took little action on building new water supplies and encouraging conservation. It wasn’t for the want of trying by some legislators, like State Representative* Allan Ritter (R-Nederland), who pushed to get money for the state’s Water Plan. But that bill didn’t pass. The only major water bill that passed last session, on groundwater rights for private property owners, may have actually made things worse.
In the meantime, the state’s de facto water policy became ‘Pray for Rain.’
Texas lawmakers appear to be ready to start seriously funding water development and conservation in the state. They’re looking at creating a state-run program, with billions of dollars, that would pick projects based on need and efficacy, administered by an oversight board appointed by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the House.
But it all sounds awfully similar to another state-run grant program that has come under harsh review for a lack of oversight and accountability: the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute (CPRIT).
In Houston, a biker crosses a utility right-of-way
Update: Rep. Jim Murphy filed a new bill February 18, 2013 that appears to still limit a utility’s liability but not in cases of “gross negligence.”
The electricity industry is among the biggest of the big spenders on lobbying the Texas legislature. So when bills are introduced giving the industry extraordinary protection from law suits, you can bet somebody’s going to cry foul.
“It’s a very unusual bill,” says Andrew Wheat at Texans for Public Justice, a corporate watchdog group in Austin. Continue Reading →
If you live in the East Texas town of Timpson, or nearby, chances are you’ve had a shaky week. It all started last Friday, very early in the morning, when an earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale struck just north of town, causing minor damage. Then on Tuesday, again, very early in the morning, a smaller 2.8 quake struck. Then yesterday afternoon another quake occurred, just south of town, with a strength of 2.7. That’s three earthquakes within a week.
So what’s going on? We put that question to Dr. Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist that studies manmade earthquakes at the University of Texas at Austin. Yes, manmade.
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