Kate Galbraith reported on clean energy for The New York Times from 2008 to 2009, serving as the lead writer for the Times' Green blog. She began her career at The Economist in 2000 and spent 2005 to 2007 in Austin as the magazine's Southwest correspondent. A Nieman fellow in journalism at Harvard University from 2007 to 2008, she has an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard and a master's degree from the London School of Economics.
The Sierra Club is going after several coal plants in Texas.
FAIRFIELD, Texas — Staring across a lake at the oldest coal-fired power plant in Texas, Mayor Roy Hill thinks back to the early 1970s, when his father helped bring the plant to the area.
“Quite honestly, this plant saved Fairfield,” Hill said. Should it close, he said, the economic impact would be “catastrophic.”
But closing Big Brown, as it is known, and two other 1970s-era coal plants in East Texas has emerged as a top goal of the Sierra Club. The group is escalating a campaign against the plants’ corporate owner, Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, whose subsidiaries include the state’s largest power-generation company. Coal combustion produces mercury and other pollutants, and environmentalists say that the old plants are especially harmful to the climate and Texans’ health.
“We can’t fix the climate problem in the United States unless we fix what’s happening” at EFH, said Al Armendariz, who is leading the Sierra Club’s anti-coal push in Texas. The company, the club says, operates some of the nation’s dirtiest coal plants. Continue Reading →
“You can see the writing on the wall, that there are so many people moving [to Texas] and there is only going to be so much water,” said Debra Johnson, who works for Goodwin Management and serves as the association’s property manager.
Like the Woods at Brushy Creek, a small but rising number of homeowners groups are easing requirements for installing turf, and now two Texas lawmakers are trying to ensure that the trend goes statewide. Two bills, Senate Bill 198 and House Bill 449, by Sen. Kirk Watson and Rep. Dawnna Dukes, both Austin Democrats, would prevent HOAs from restricting xeriscaping. It’s an issue that has received rising attention as the drought continues. Continue Reading →
The Railroad Commission of Texas regulates one of the most advanced industries in the world — oil and gas drilling. Yet the commission’s software systems, many of its rules and even its name are from another era.
As the 122-year-old agency confronts a drilling boom that is altering the state and national economies, an overhaul of its operations is under way. Its old mainframe computer system will be upgraded with modern digital storage, clearing the way for a more user-friendly website. Decades-old regulations are getting updated to reflect the rapid spread of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. And the Legislature may change the commission’s name to accurately reflect what it does. (The commission’s railroad duties ended in 2005.)
The push does not go far enough for critics, who charge that the commission is too cozy with the industry it regulates and fails to adequately address environmental problems. Nonetheless, observers say there is a burst of energy, unseen in years, at the sometimes-languid commission.
The changes are “very important. They’re long overdue,” said John Hays, a partner at the Austin law firm Hays & Owens, whose clients include oil and gas companies. Continue Reading →
A Legislative Budget Board (LBB) report on how government can be more efficient and effective has recommended that the state reduce its gas tax exemption for hydraulic fracturing.
The expansive report released Wednesday by the LBB, a state body that offers budget and policy recommendations for legislators, recommended that the state change the method it uses to calculate the tax. That change would have the practical effect of increasing tax rates on gas produced through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The push to increase taxes on frackers has surfaced periodically in the Legislature, especially given the spread of fracking in recent years and the state’s tight budgets. But the drilling industry has argued that higher taxes would force gas companies to drill in other states. Continue Reading →
Engineers on the drilling platform of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, England.
A new University of Texas at Austin study has found that the amount of water used in the drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing has risen sharply in recent years as oil and natural gas production has surged.
But the 97-page study, funded by the Texas Oil and Gas Association, also found that the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing would level off sometime in the decade starting in 2020, as water recycling technologies matured and the industry’s rapid growth rate cooled.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a water-intensive practice in which liquids are pumped underground at high pressure to retrieve oil or gas trapped in rocks, like shale.
The Texas Water Development Board circulated the study last week to regional water planning groups around the state. Those groups are preparing the state’s next water plan, due out in 2017. Continue Reading →
In a few months, a grouse known as the lesser prairie chicken will emerge from its West Texas winter hideaway. Males will do a loud and elaborate mating dance, delighting females — and birdwatchers.
“Clearly if there was some sort of moratorium on development, that would be catastrophic,” said Jeff Clark, executive director of the Wind Coalition, a regional advocacy group. He argues that wind power and prairie chickens can co-exist.
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