The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on April 13, injuring more than 200 people, destroying 50 homes and damaging other buildings.
In a letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry and governors of other states today, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) called on state leaders to do more to prevent disasters atĀ fertilizerĀ plants like the one last April in West, Texas.
“The federal government isn’t doing enough right now, and I’m going to lay out what I think we should do,” Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said at a press conference in Washington today. “But until that time, if there’s even one more tragic death from improper storage of ammonium nitrate, we’ll have lost this opportunity.”
At a hearing of theĀ committeeĀ in late June, testimony showed that the fertilizer plant in West had no sprinkler system, stored ammonium nitrate in a wood building, and wasn’t subject to a fire code.
“I want the people of West, Texas to know that I don’t intend to stop after one hearing,” Boxer said. “I am keeping my focus on this issue because I know what has to be done to save lives.” Continue Reading →
Rice has been growing in Texas since the 1800s, but for the past two years most rice farmers in Southeast Texas along the Lower Colorado River have been cut off from their usual water supplies because of the ongoing Texas drought. It’s possible they will be cut off a third time next year, leading to the question: can rice farming continue along the Lower Colorado River?
It they are cut off again next year, rice farmers on the Lower Colorado expect to lose the crop insurance benefits that have helped sustain them through the last two years without water. Some have begun planting less water-intensive alternative crops, such as sorghum and soy beans, to generate income on farms that are otherwise in economic limbo. But in this humid, once-swampy region stretching to the Gulf Coast, some rice farmers say that growing crops other than rice is not a permanently viable solution.
Coal on its way to Luminant's Big Brown power plant in Freestone County
Last fall, a newspaper article caught the eye of staff members at the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates coal mining.
“Analysts: TXU-Luminant bankruptcy possible next year,” read a headline in the Dallas Morning News.
That caused concern at the Railroad Commission because a related company,Ā Luminant Mining, is on the hook to cover around $1 billion to restore Texas land damaged by strip mining for coal.
Luminant — operator of eight of the 20 coal mines in Texas — maintains it can cover the cost of reclamation despite any possible reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.
The newspaper article would eventually be mentioned in an official order from the Railroad Commission that, in part, called for tighter monitoring of Luminant’s financial status.
As the Railroad Commission’s spokesperson Ramona Nye explained in an email to StateImpact, Luminant Mining is “now required to submit quarterly unaudited statements to the Commission and certify that they continue to meet the financial requirements of the Texas Coal Mining Regulations.”
A Conversation with Kate Galbraith and Asher Price
Texas is the oil and gas capitol of the country, with more rigs than any other state. With all that fossil fuel comes other industries, like refining and manufacturing, which also means Texas is the biggest polluter in the country. But in a surprising twist, the state has also become a leader in green energy: Texas has more wind energy than any other state, more than most countries even.
In their new book, ‘The Great Texas Wind Rush,’ reporters Kate Galbraith and Asher Price tell the story of how Texas became an unlikely leader in wind energy. It’s a story of dust bowls, “windcatters” and strange political and ideological bedfellows.
“I just thought it was incredible that the oil and gas state had become, in 2006, number one in wind energy, surpassing California of all places,” Galbraith, a former reporter for the Texas Tribune (a partner of StateImpact Texas), says of their inspiration to write the book. “Somehow they planted all these turbines in the Western Plains, and there it went!”
Harvey Gebhard, CEO of the Lone Star Barbecue Society
Listen to Harvey Gebhard talk about grilling and you can almost smell the smoke. Gebhard is the CEO of the Lone Star Barbecue Society, aĀ group that organizes charity cook-offs.
āGet the smoke going, and stand over it and let the smoke get in your eyes,ā he advised me in a recent interview. ā[Your eyes] get to watering, and your nose gets to running, and all your friends come around. āHey man, what are you cooking!? Hey man, when’s it gonna be ready!?ā
āItās a Texas thing, man!ā He concluded, almost lost in revery.
As you can tell, the appeal of grilling isnāt all about the food for Gebhard. Itās about the smoke.Ā For him, recent research from The University of California, Davis is about as unwelcome as rain on the Fourth of July. The study highlights the danger of smoke from outdoor grilling to public health.
Tom Bragg, left, of Sunpro Inc., works on finishing filling his truck with water as Gary Wortman takes off the filler hose from his truck after filling up with water at a Chesapeake Energy Corporation fresh water collection station at a sand and gravel pit, May 31, 2012, in Carroll County, Ohio.
From ProPublica:
When the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike.
In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution of an aquifer deep below the town of Pavillion, Wy. ā the first time such a claim had been based on a scientific analysis.
The study drew heated criticism over its methodology and awaited a peer review that promised to settle the dispute. Now the EPA will instead hand the study over to the state of Wyoming, whose research will be funded by EnCana, the very drilling company whose wells may have caused the contamination.
Industry advocates say the EPA’s turnabout reflects an overdue recognition that it had over-reached on fracking and that its science was critically flawed.
But environmentalists see an agency that is systematically disengaging from any research that could be perceived as questioning the safety of fracking or oil drilling, even as President Obama lays out a plan to combat climate change that rests heavily on the use of natural gas. Continue Reading →
Before last week, the only positive thing about zebra mussels in Texas was that they lived in just two of the state’s lakes.
But even thatās not the case anymore.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) released an emergency order yesterday which enacted special regulations for three new North Texas lakes to control zebra mussels.
Now, boaters that enter Lake Bridgeport, Eagle Mountain Lake, and Lake Worth must completely drain and dry their boats before entering another body of water. The mandate is designed to stop the spread of zebra mussel larvae, which are invisible to the naked eye and can cling to wet surfaces. Continue Reading →
Last week, the African Rhino Specialist GroupĀ (AfRSG)Ā confirmed the extinction of the western black rhinoceros. Although the species had initially been declared extinct in 2011, a final search failed to find any remaining rhinos.
While Texas doesn’t have a thriving rhinoceros population, the news got StateImpact Texas thinking about which species from our state may face extinction.
To find out, we interviewed John Davis, the Wildlife Diversity Program Director at the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife. He talked about certain species’ most pressing problems, the drought’s effect on wildlife, and how the TPWD chooses what plants and animals to focus on.
Q: I was hoping we could start by listing what, in your view, are the most at-risk species [in Texas] to become extinct.
A: Iām sorry, but I canāt answer that. We actually have over 440 species that are considered to be globally rare, which means they are the most imperiled. I could go through that list and pull out a few, but Iām not really sure it is possible for me to answer. Now another reason why that answer is difficult is the fact that is there are many species that we believe are rare, but the truth is we donāt have enough resources to determine āis species A is rarer than species B or species C.ā To really try to prioritize which are the rarest of the rare is not a real useful ranking at this point.
A device that transmits information on soil moisture in a cornfield belonging to David Ford (standing) a farmer near the Texas Panhandle town of Dumas. He is participating in a water-saving demonstration project.
DUMAS ā Deep in the Texas Panhandle, where the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer has left farmers fearful for their future, Harold Grall is hoping his field of tiny green corn plants will survive with minimal watering.
āWeāre doing everything that we know possible that we can do to conserve water,ā Grall, a corn farmer, said as his pickup bounced toward the 120-acre field.
He planted the cornfield later than most, in an effort to capture more summer rainfall and reduce the need for Ogallala water. He also did not water it before planting the corn seeds, a risky move for land parched after three years of drought.
Grallās cornfield is part of a closely watched demonstration project aimed at showing farmers how to use less irrigation water on their crops. It was put together by a groundwater authority in the Panhandle that strictly limits the amount of Ogallala water each farmer can pump. The project reflects the harsh reality that has taken hold across the drought-stricken state: farmers, who account for more than half of the water used in Texas, must learn to do more with less, just like cities and industrial plants. Continue Reading →
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A Conversation with Kate Galbraith and Asher Price
