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.
April Bridges searches through the remains of a house she at when it was destroyed by a tornado on April 3, 2012 in Arlington, Texas
Note: The tornado Monday in Moore, Oklahoma has been upgraded to an “EF5” on the Enhanced Fujita Scale from an “EF4.”
Monday’s devastating tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, and another fatal and destructive storm in Granbury, Texas the week before have called attention to the system of tornado measurement called the “Enhanced Fujita Scale.” The Tornado in Texas measured an EF4 on the scale, the one to strike Moore is now ranked an “EF5.” But just what does that mean?
The Enhanced Fujita scale is the most recent incarnation of a system of tornado measurement invented by Dr. T. Theodore Fujita in 1971. According to NOAA the original scale was designed to 1) categorize each tornado by its intensity and its area and 2) estimate a wind speed associated with the damage caused by the tornado. It became the standard by which tornadoes were measured in the U.S.
The scale ranks storms from level F0 (gale) to level F5 (incredible). But, as you can see, it has a weakness. Namely, it is subjective as a system of measurement and “based solely on the damage caused by a tornado. If the same tornado that hit Granbury, last week had touched down in an unpopulated stretch of the plains with no people and no structures, its rank on the scale would have been significantly lower. Continue Reading →
The Texas House tackled many Senate measures Monday night, SJR1 was not among them.
Twice the arrival of SJR1 was announced before the House Monday night, and twice it disappeared like a stock pond in a Texas drought.
Senate Joint Resolution 1 would amend the state constitution to create two accounts to fund water infrastructure projects. That would require voter approval in November. Lawmakers in the House had been talking about this approach to water funding for over a week, but needed to negotiate amendments to the Senate version of the measure and bring it through committee before it could come to the floor.
Last Friday many thought a deal had been struck to bring the measure to a vote on Monday.
The first time the bill was announced Monday, a lawmaker rose to speak but began addressing an amendment for a different, previously postponed, bill. Confusion briefly took hold as some Representatives were unsure what bill had been brought to the floor.
The second time the bill was called it was quickly postponed till 9:00 PM and then not spoken of again on the floor of the House.
While it's called the Railroad Commission of Texas, it actually deals with regulating oil and gas in the state. And a name change isn't likely to happen this session.
As Americans watch the U.S. Bureau of Land Management develop rules to manage fracking on federal land, the Texans among them would be forgiven for wondering “what does have to do with us?” After all, due to the state’s unique history, there are virtually no federal lands in Texas.
Well, the rules may have more to do with Texas than you may think. Particularly in their reliance on the online database FracFocus.org to disclose what chemicals drillers are pumping into the ground.
As we reported last month, FracFocus was criticized in a report from Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law Program. It found that the database doesn’t do a good job of disclosing information and can make it more difficult for companies to comply with state regulations. Twelve states, including Texas, require drillers to use FracFocus to disclose their drilling chemical mixes.
The Harvard report, which was quickly dismissed by many state regulators including the Railroad Commission of Texas, also echoed previous findings that FracFocus allows too many companies to hide their chemical ingredients under the guise of trade secrets. This is especially a concern for people worried about the potential for groundwater pollution associated with fracking.
Part of the aim of the Harvard report was to encourage the Bureau of Land Management to seek out a more comprehensive and user-friendly system for companies to disclose what chemicals they use.
Only a very small percentage of bills filed in each Legislative session are adopted into law.
KUT’s Veronica Zaragovia co-reported this article.
A revised version of a plan to pay for Texas water projects is heading for the House floor today.
Senate Joint Resolution 1 would amend the state constitution to create two accounts to fund water infrastructure projects. That would require voter approval in November. Lawmakers in the House had been talking about this approach to water funding for the last week, but needed to negotiate amendments to the Senate version of the measure and bring it through committee before it could come to the floor.
Friday, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the original SJR of language it contained about billions of dollars of funding from the Rainy Day fund that would go into the accounts. It also removed language about funding for transportation.
The House plans to vote on the funding issue separately as part of the appropriations process.
Bastrop area landowners attended a meeting of the local groundwater conservation district on Wednesday
This story was co-reported by Andrew Weber for KUT News.
It’s easy to understand why Rick Knall would be nervous with outside businesses taking water from his neck of the woods. Knall is a property owner in Bastrop County who relies on his well.
“Our well has been a godsend it has been pumping strong good clean fresh water for a number of years,” he said at a hearing of the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District last night.
Like many others at the hearing, he worried that that steady supply could dry up with more straws in the ground. But the question of whether the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District would move ahead granting new permits had resonance beyond this Central Texas community.
“I think the whole state will be watching this,” Steve Box, with Environmental Stewardship, told StateImpact Texas ahead of the hearing.
His group opposes the permits. He and others saw the hearing as a sort of test case for the role of local groundwater districts.
A plan from the Texas Senate would take big decisions about funding for water and roads and put them in the hands of voters.
There’s a new push at the State Capital to pull $2 Billion dollars from Texas’ Rainy Day Fund and put it towards water projects. After a recent move in the House died on the floor in dramatic fashion two weeks ago, there were real questions on whether the water plan would get funded this legislative session. Today, backers of that plan got a glimmer of hope, while opponents are concerned the state could end up spending more than it should.
The new idea is to use a resolution already passed in the state Senate, SJR 1, where lawmakers would vote to set aside two billion dollars from the rainy day fund for water. But it would put the decision to create a dedicated account for water projects to voters statewide.
“The $2 billion dollars doesn’t go into the fund unless the fund is created by the voters,” says House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts.
Why so complicated? Doing it like this, lawmakers may see a way to fund water projects without voting to break the state-mandated spending cap. That was something many Republicans were loathe to do. Continue Reading →
Lone Camp Volunteer Fire Department chief Charlie Sims leads his crew while fighting a wildfire on September 1, 2011 in Graford, Texas.
First, the good news for Texas.
Most of the state is not expected to be at an “above average” risk for wildfires this summer, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The reason for that might depress you: in parts of the state with less vegetation, like West Texas, years of drought and fire mean there’s little left to burn.
“That was part of the reason why some of the fire activity this past winter spring was down from last year,” Tom Spencer head of predictive services with the Texas Forest Service, tells StateImpact Texas.
Spencer said wooded parts of the state like the Hill Country and the Piney Woods are at greater risk of fire. Continue Reading →
The big questions about the future of pipelines in Texas this legislative session revolve around how companies should be able to use eminent domain to build them. Those questions remain unanswered.
But while Texas lawmakers have been unable to agree on reforms to pipeline companies common carrier status, they have voted some other bills out that overhaul the regulation of pipelines in Texas. As we reported earlier, a bill that would allow fracking wastewater to be transported by pipeline was recently voted out of the State Senate.
Another Bill, SB 901, is headed to Conference Committee. That bill would update “inconsistent and outdated” parts of the Texas Natural Resources Code having to do with pipeline safety that are out of whack with federal code. Read more here.
Searchers in protective suits walk through the blast zone of the fertilizer plant that exploded.
Update:House Bill 1714 failed to come up for a vote in the Texas House by the end of the day Thursday, the deadline for bills to pass out of the House. This is first time the bill has not been approved by the house since 2003, when  Rep. Wayne Smith first filed it. Previously the bill has always died in the State Senate, according to testimony Rep. Smith gave at an April 9th committee hearing.Â
Investigators continue to sift through the rubble in West, Texas to learn how a fertilizer plant there exploded, taking 15 lives and destroying nearly two hundred homes. Â Many state officials deny that environmental regulations, or their absence, Â had anything to do with the disaster.
But that hasn’t stopped the tragedy from changing the way people talk about environmental regulation this session.
The bill would end a program that grades businesses on environmental compliance and makes those grades public. The bill’s author, state Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, says the program at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) burdens businesses and regulators alike.
As the legislature enters its final weeks, what are the big energy issues still facing lawmakers? Sunday on KXAN StateImpact Texas’ Mose Buchele joined a panel to discuss how water, drilling and fracking are forcing legislators to make some tough decisions as things get down to the wire. You can watch their discussion in the video above.
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