Mose Buchele is the Austin-based broadcast reporter for StateImpact. He has been on staff at KUT 90.5 in Austin since 2009, covering local and state issues. Mose has also worked as a blogger on politics and an education reporter at his hometown paper in Western Massachusetts. He holds masters degrees in Latin American Studies and Journalism from UT Austin.
Residents of North Texas testifying before the Railroad Commission in Austin in January 2014.
A Very Different Oil and Gas ‘Boom’ Comes to Texas
“You might think you were in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Greg Morrison told a panel of state officials in Azle, Texas recently. “It feels like a semi truck hitting your house with a bomb going off.”
He was describing the experience of a 3.6 magnitude earthquake that hit his North Texas town late last year. Earthquakes were all but unknown in the area until a few years ago; now communities in the region are experiencing dozens of them, sometimes multiple times a day. In fact, there was one near the North Texas community of Benbrook just this weekend.
North Texas is not alone in being shook up. As the oil and gas boom has taken off, several areas of Texas (as well as other states) are experiencing quakes. These are often areas where drilling is taking place or where drilling waste water disposal wells are present. And, in many instances, residents are reporting loud noises — a “boom” — along with the shaking. Continue Reading →
A picture provided to StateImpact Texas from property rights activist Julia Trigg Crawford of what she said was work on the Keystone pipeline.
Before the oil started flowing in earnest through the southern part of the Keystone XL pipeline last week, land owner and property rights activist Julia Trigg Crawford noticed work crews unearthing parts of of the pipeline. When StateImpact called Crawford for a quote about the pipeline’s activation, she mentioned that activity.
“Track hoes, skids, water trucks, electrical trucks and construction crews showed up,” Crawford said. “They unearthed the pipeline, attached wires and sensors, wrapped it in something and then covered it up.”
Crawford added that TransCanada, the company that owns the pipeline, told her it had been installing temperature sensors. StateImpact Texas emailed TransCanada for confirmation, but did not hear back by the piece’s Wednesday morning deadline, a fact noted in the original article.
Wednesday evening TransCanada sent an email explaining the work.
State Rep. Bill Callegari spoke about water policy at this years TAMEST conference.
State Rep. Bill Callegari (R-Houston), more than many lawmakers, knows water. An engineer, he holds “Class A” certifications in water and wastewater management. During his time in the Texas legislature, much of it spent serving on the House Natural Resources Committee, he authored several major bills on water management and water utilities. His office biography calls him “the state’s leading water expert in the Texas Legislature.”
The Katy Republican is also not what you would call an impartial observer. Having served as president of national and international water companies for decades, he hopes to work with two of his sons — also in the water business — after his upcoming retirement from the House. Like so many other state lawmakers in a part-time legislature, he often finds himself weighing in on policy discussions that have a bearing on his business future.
With those disclaimers, we thought it would be interesting to touch base with Rep. Callegari ahead of his retirement. Lawmakers have run plenty of victory laps taken since the passage of Proposition 6, the ballot measure that aims to fund the state water plan with billions in seed money. But even supporters of Prop 6 admit it will not solve all of the state’s problems.
StateImpact Texas: Now that there’s money in the fund for water projects. Are we going to see a lot more action at the regional water planning level?
Rep. Callegari: Â The prioritization, in my opinion, is really going to be the most important aspect of this: How do you really determine which project to build first? Continue Reading →
Julia Trigg Crawford has several hundred acres of land in northeast Texas. She lost her recent challenge to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Update: TransCanada has emailed a response to this report. You can read about that here.
The Keystone XL Pipeline runs under Julia Trigg Crawford’s North Texas farm. It’s been carrying crude for over a month. But today business is scheduled to open in earnest on the controversial pipeline, with oil flowing from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries in Texas. That’s why she’s worried about an “unusual flurry of activity” she noticed over the weekend.
“Track hoes, skids, water trucks, electrical trucks and construction crews showed up,” Crawford tells StateImpact Texas. “They unearthed the pipeline, attached wires and sensors, wrapped it in something and then covered it up.”
She says TransCanada — the company that owns the pipeline — later told her it was installing heat sensors. (Representatives from TransCanada did not respond to an interview request by deadline). But her interest in the activity goes beyond that isolated incident.
Crawford has long battled the pipeline company over its use of eminent domain, where the company has claimed private property to route the pipeline through Texas. Since she and other opponents of the project have failed to stop it, they now plan to keep it under intense scrutiny. The southern leg of the Keystone XL may become the most watched pipeline in the country.
Dead fish washed ashore during a toxic bloom of golden algae in Canyon Lakes in Lubbock, Texas.
From the Asian Carp to the Zebra Mussel, Texas has its fair share of invasive species. Some of them get a lot of attention (I’m looking at you, voracious feral hog). Others tend to sneak under the radar even when they damage ecosystems.
Take Golden Algae. Originally from Europe, the microscopic plant was discovered on the Pecos River in 1985 when an algae bloom killed hundreds of thousands of fish. Since then, it has colonized other Texas river basins and killed millions more fish. Unlike deadly algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico that kill fish by taking all the oxygen, golden algae is, itself, toxic. Under the right circumstances, it produces a poison that kills fish, bivalves (and probably any other animal with gills) in the affected waters.
So, it’s no surprise that scientists are trying to learn about it.
View Earthquakes Near Azle, Texas in a larger map Map created by Andrew Weber for KUT News and StateImpact Texas. Orange circles represent earthquakes, wavy blue lines represent active wastewater disposal wells.
Another minor earthquake shook the North Texas community of Azle on Monday. It’s one of dozens to hit the region over the last few months that have residents on edge and complaining of property damage.
Many see a link between the quakes and increased oil and gas activity. But challenges confront scientists researching the quakes for the U.S. Geological Survey and Southern Methodist University. For one, they’ve needed to more accurately pinpoint the epicenters of the Azle quakes.
“The closest seismograph station used by the National Earthquake Information Center to locate the Azle earthquakes is over 60 miles to the south, the next closest is 125 miles to the West,” USGS Seismologist Williams Ellsworth explained in a letter to Azle Mayor Alan Brundrett in a December letter obtained by StateImpact Texas (embedded below).
In that same letter, Ellsworth explains how he has produced a more accurate map of the quakes, one that shows them clustered in a more concentrated location than previously thought.
“To date, it looks like the earthquakes are all in one very localized zone,” Ellsworth confirmed to StateImpact Texas over the phone.
This photo courtesy of Tad Arensmeier via Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/11304433@N00/446771802/sizes/l/
An Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.
Update, Jan. 23: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced this week that they will delay consideration of the proposed rule outlawing the gassing of rattlesnakes. A revised rule will be proposed and considered by the department in March.
Original Story: Pouring gasoline or other noxious chemicals into the earth to force rattlesnakes and other animals from their underground homes has been a tactic of some hunters and snake wranglers for years. But it has a harmful effect on the environment and wildlife. Now, Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPWD) is considering following in the path of 30 other states and banning the practice in most circumstances.
The technique, known as “gassing” is used to capture and/or kill many different types of animals, including prairie dogs. But its greatest defenders appear to be those involved in “rattlesnake roundups” that are a tradition in parts of the state.
On the other side, scientists, animal welfare advocates and state regulators say that the time for a ban has come. When a similar ban was considered in Alabama, professionals in the snake venom collection business supported it as well, saying snakes that had been captured through “gassing” generally died before they could produce much venom, reports Outdoor Alabama.
In today’s meeting of the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state Agency that regulates the Texas oil and gas industry, Commissioner David Porter announced the search for a staff seismologist in response to the rash of small earthquakes that have sprung up throughout the state along with the boom in oil and gas production.
The hire “will allow the commission to be able to study seismic activity in Texas based on proven science and facts which the commission rules and regulations must be based on,” Porter said as he instructed Milton Rister, Commission Executive Director, to begin the search.
The announcement comes after a “listening session” Commissioner Porter and Commission Staff attended with residents of Azle, Texas. The town is home to numerous waste water disposal wells and has experienced dozens of quakes in recent months. The link between waste water disposal and earthquakes has been proven in other regions and the townspeople were disappointed when Porter and others repeated Railroad Commission assertions that a link was something that remains unanswered by science.
After 20 earthquakes in a month, will state regulators respond?
Last week we reported from the Texas town of Azle, where a swarm of low-intensity earthquakes has frightened townspeople, damaged property, and put state regulators on the defensive.
Azle had never experienced earthquakes like this before the arrival of waste water disposal wells, related to oil and gas drilling. Science has shown how those wells can cause earthquakes, so the people of the region were hoping for some answers when the Railroad Commission of Texas, the Agency that regulates the state’s oil and gas sector, came to town for a public forum.
The mood soured when Commissioner David Porter announced that he would not be answering questions.
The same day that event was taking place in Texas, our colleagues at StateImpact Oklahoma were filing their own report on the sudden uptick in earthquakes there.
ERCOT controls the power grid for about 23 million customers in Texas.
At the heart of the energy emergency that brought Texas to the brink of rolling blackouts this morning was the failure of power plants to provide electricity when the state needed it, says the state grid operator. That included two plants in North Central Texas that suffered equipment failure caused by freezing weather.
In fact, the state saw higher electric demand during a cold spell last month, without going into an “energy emergency,” ERCOT Spokesperson Robbie Searcy said in a telephone news conference today.
The difference this time was that there was less power available.
“We lost about 3,700 megawatts of generation,” said Dan Woodfin, ERCOT’s Director of System Operations. “About half of that was weather-related and the remainder were due to non-weather-related issues.”
Woodfin said about 1,800 megawatts of lost power came from two large plants that were forced offline after some of their monitoring equipment froze.
“Probably if we had lost another unit it would have put us into an Energy Emergency Alert Three,” Woodfin said, referring to the level that would have prompted rolling blackouts.
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“To date, it looks like the earthquakes are all in one very localized zone,” Ellsworth confirmed to StateImpact Texas over the phone.
