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.
Efforts to overhaul land rights failed in this years regular legislative session.
This is part two of a three-part series devoted to looking at efforts to overhaul eminent domain in Texas and what may come next for landowners, pipeline companies, and the oil and gas industry. Read Part One here.
At the outset of this yearâs regular legislative session, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle filed a handful of bills to change how pipeline companies can take land in Texas. While the bills tackled the issue differently, they had one thing in common: they sought to move some of the debate over a pipeline’s use of condemnation from county courthouses to state agencies. In the end it was that commonality that became a sticking point in the debate over Texas land rights.
Along the way, some very big names in politics and industry got involved.
Right now, a company that wants to lay a pipeline in Texas can check a box on a form declaring itself a âcommon carrier.â The idea is that it will provide its services for hire to transport oil and gas. Itâs that role  â which some say makes it similar to a utility – that gives it the right to take land.
Jake White, a Jefferson Country farmer, looks at a section of the Crosstex NGL pipeline before it is buried under his field.
This is part one of a three-part series devoted to looking at efforts to overhaul eminent domain in Texas and what may come next for landowners, pipeline companies, and the oil and gas industry. Read Part Two here.
At Margaret OâKeefeâs farm, outside of Beaumont in East Texas, they grow high quality Bermuda grass. The fields are flat, vibrant light green and dotted with crawfish burrows. They’re surrounded by woods of a darker, richer green.
The land has deep significance to the family. OâKeefe inherited it from her mother who divided it among her eight children.
âShe used to call it ‘Enchanted Valley,'” O’Keefe reminisced on a muggy summer afternoon while driving through her fields. “Sometimes it rains here and it wonât rain anywhere else. And sometimes it rains outside of here and rain never touches here.â
Her ‘Enchanted Valley’ also lies in the path of the Crosstex NGL Pipeline. Thatâs a 130-mile, multimillion-dollar project to funnel natural gas liquids from Texas to processing plants in Louisiana.
All across the state, a rush is on to build up infrastructure to transport the vast reserves of oil and gas unleashed by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Pipelines are the preferred method. But, as is the case at the O’Keefe’s farm, the plans of the pipeline companies often clash with the desires of landowners. Continue Reading →
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, a group that organizes charity cook-offs.
âGet the smoke going, and stand over it and let the smoke get in your eyes,â he advised me in a recent interview. â[Your eyes] get to watering, and your nose gets to running, and all your friends come around. âHey man, what are you cooking!? Hey man, when’s it gonna be ready!?â
âItâs a Texas thing, man!â He concluded, almost lost in revery.
As you can tell, the appeal of grilling isnât all about the food for Gebhard. Itâs about the smoke. 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.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Natural Resources Coodinator Greg Creacy looks at a pine tree burned in the historic wildfires of 2011. Oak trees grow behind him.
Take a trip to the lake at Bastrop State Park, and -at first glance- everything appears normal. The loblolly pine trees that line the shore are singed, but not decimated by the wildfires that struck there in 2011. A turtle suns itself on a rock, a lizard scurries into the underbrush.
Look closer and you see something strange. Large air bubbles are rising from the center of the lake. Erosion caused by those fires is depleting the water of oxygen, so park officials pump air into the water to help all those turtles, fish, and the rest survive.
Welcome to an ecosystem on life support.
In 2011, wildfires burned around 95 percent percent of the Park, which was part of the south westernmost loblolly pine forest in Texas. Now, officials are trying to restore that forest, and their efforts are revealing lessons about the land that could help after fires in other parts of the country.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a major case pitting the water needs of North Texas against its northern neighbor. At issue was Texas’ ability to access water from the Red River in Oklahoma.
The Tarrant Regional Water District serves 11 counties in fast-growing North Texas, including the city of Fort Worth. It argued that the state is due that water under an interstate water sharing agreement. Because it was not flowing downstream, Texas had the right to go upstream, into Oklahoma, to get it.
Oklahoma passed laws banning that from happening. So, six years ago, the water district sued. It said the ban violated a water compact agreed to by the states.
This week the Supreme Court sided with Oklahoma, saying that state’s laws trump the interstate compact. Sarah Tran is a law professor at Southern Methodist University who calls the ruling a win for advocates of state sovereignty. She says Texas will have to go âback to the drawing board” to get access to the water.
So what does this mean for the future of water in North Texas?
A fledgling mockingbird seeks refuge in a tomato plant in Austin, Texas.
It’s a story familiar to pet owners.
About a week ago, I was watering our small raised garden when I noticed two baby mockingbirds hanging out in the tomato plants. There was a grown bird nearby, watching its offspring and chattering angrily at me. I didnât think much of it until later, when I heard my wife scolding our dogs in the front yard. Eddie and Bobo, our fawn pugs, had found one of the baby birds and decided it was play time.
They played rough. A little too rough.
As I buried the fledgling, I got to thinking: is this happening in front yards all across the state? Even all across the country?
State Rep. Sylvester Turner helped create the System Benefit Fund. He will now see the fund drawn down.
At the start of the year, over $800 million sat unused in a state fund designed to help low income Texans, and state Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, thought there was nothing he could do about it.
“If you had asked me in January, did I envision these dollars going to the intended population? I would have said ‘No,'” Turner, a Houston attorney, says now. “I simply did not think that that legislature, with the leadership that was in place, would take those dollars and put them towards poor people.”
Now, months later, the money is likely going where he did not think it would, into discounts to help poor Texans pay their electric bills. But the budget deal that freed the money up ensured that all assistance will disappear within a few years. That’s left some low income Texans, and their advocates, unsure whether to claim victory or defeat.
The Mexican border. More and more pipelines are being built to bring natural gas from Texas into Mexico.
When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would issue a permit to export liquified natural gas to new markets from a facility in Texas recently, the news was greeted as a game changer. Opening international markets could drive the price of natural gas up domestically, spur a new rush to drill for gas, and stimulate some parts of the economy while disrupting others.
Despite all that excitement, a second, quieter, natural gas export boom is already taking place right under our noses. Mexico is importing a record amount of natural gas to create electricity and feed its growing industrial base. Eighty percent of all the gas Mexico imports comes from the United States, and 60 percent comes directly from pipelines in Texas.
“Thatâs something that most people probably havenât been aware of,” David Blackmon, an industry consultant and natural gas advocate told StateImpact Texas. “Weâve always exported natural gas into Mexico, so this whole debate over whether we can export it in liquid form rather than pipelines has always kind of befuddled me.”
Photo courtesy of Photomonkey via Flickr's creative commons http://bit.ly/10MHsQP
The House and Senate both advanced measures to fund the State Water Plan, but many hurdles remain.
After days of postponement, arm twisting and behind the scenes negotiation, measures to advance funding for Texas’ State Water Plan were approved in the State Legislature Wednesday.
Lawmakers have been talking about taking money from state’s rainy day fund to improve water infrastructure since at least 2011, when a historic drought gripped the state. Today, members of the House and Senate found the votes to keep that plan alive.
The House voted 130-16 to call for a constitutional amendment to create two accounts from which to loan money for water projects. The Senate passed a supplementary budget bill that would put around $2 billion dollars in that water bank from the state’s rainy day fund with a vote of 29-3.
Because of complicated deal making between the State House and Senate and between Democrats and Republicans, the vote on the constitutional amendment was postponed past a House deadline yesterday while lawmakers waited to make sure the supplementary budget in the Senate contained what they wanted.
Neither chamber would jump first. Wednesday, they held hands and jumped together.
Lawmakers in the House voting for a rule suspension to postpone a vote on SJR1 until Wednesday.
Update: SJR1 was finally approved in the Texas House on Wednesday night. Read more here.
Right now Texas does not have the capacity to supply water to everyone who wants it in times of drought. Lawmakers have talked about taking money from Texas’ rainy day fund to fix that problem for years. On Monday, a vote was scheduled in the State House to help make the plan a reality. It would call for a constitutional amendment to set up two bank accounts to loan out money for water projects. Now, itâs Wednesday and the vote still has not come.
The measure, called Senate Joint Resolution One, is about water. But the intrigue surrounding it is about money. A vote on the resolution was postponed Monday, then again on Tuesday afternoon. There is a Texas House rule saying it had to be voted on by midnight last night, so that seemed like a sure thing. Except lawmakers suspended that rule later in the evening.
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