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.
A controversial proposal from a Mexican company to dig an open pit coal mine near the border town of Eagle Pass will likely go before the Railroad Commission of Texas in January, and odds are it will get the green light.
Backers of the Dos Republicas mining project received some good news before Thanksgiving when Railroad Commission Hearings Examiner Marcy Spraggins recommended that they be allowed to mine the area. The project had provoked opposition from local politicians as well as community members concerned with environmental impacts. Some local business people in the area have welcomed the plan, saying it will bring jobs.
The case highlights the larger issues of coal’s future in the United States and abroad. While Texas may very likely be building its last coal power plant, coal exports are reaching record highs. That’s prompted some to ask if U.S. efforts to control carbon pollution associated with coal will make a difference globally, when it’s simply mined here and then burned somewhere else in the world.
Slide Presented by Art McGarr, USGS at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
A slide presented by Art McGarr with the USGS, shows a link between the amount of fluid injected into disposal wells and the strength of earthquakes associated with those wells.
There’s already a general scientific consensus that the disposal wells used to store waste deep underground from drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) can cause earthquakes. But researchers are going into a little more detail about the relationship between quakes and wells at this week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
At a panel discussion Wednesday, three prominent seismologists presented their recent work. One of them was Art McGarr, of the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center. He’s been looking at whether the amount of fluid stored in a disposal well affects the strength of an earthquake.
His answer: it does.
“I think we’re at the point when, if you tell me that you want to inject a certain amount of waste water, for example a million cubic meters for a particular activity, I can tell you that the maximum magnitude is going to be five (on the Richter scale) or less. I emphasize or less,” McGarr said in his presentation.
Record hot days in December. Should we be happy or worried?
It was a beautiful weekend in much of Texas. Here in Austin, people arrived in t-shirts and shorts at the annual lighting of the Capitol Christmas Tree. They sang carols in the old fashioned way, but some may have decided to forgo the hot chocolate.
The temperatures hovered around 80.
Austin wasn’t alone in being unseasonably warm — Houston had record highs Saturday and Sunday.
As an unusually warm year stretches into December, more and more people are experiencing two conflicting emotions simultaneously. They’re happy with temperatures that allow outdoor barbeques and even a dip in the pool as winter begins, but concerned that it’s all somehow related to global climate change.
And they’re at a loss for succinct ways to express those feelings.
“This is great weather, but…” is one option. But could there be an easier way?
Cracked ground in far West Texas. Some parts of the state never fully recovered from the drought of 2011.
Only a quarter inch of rain will have fallen on average in Texas through the entire month of November, according to estimates provided to StateImpact Texas by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
That would make it about the 3rd or 4th driest November since record keeping started in 1895. If you look at the last two months together, estimates say it’s been the driest October and November since the drought of record in the 1950s.
“The worst one year drought in Texas on record began in October 2010 and lasted about a year,” NOAA meteorologist Victor Murphy tells StateImpact Texas.
“We saw some brief improvement in late 2011, early 2012, and now boom! We’re right back in a pretty dry pattern again,” Murphy added. “So, arguably, you could make the case that perhaps we’re in the third year of drought here in Texas. Especially certain parts of the state, we obviously are.”
Strutting its Stuff. The Lesser Prairie Chicken was proposed for listing as "threatened" today by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the start of a process that could lead to the listing of the Lesser Prairie Chicken as a ‘threatened species’ under the Endangered Species Act.
The bird lives in the grasslands of the Texas panhandle, as well as in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. The proposal to list it as “threatened” rather than “endangered” allows Fish and Wildlife more flexibility in crafting conservation measures for the animal.
Under the listing, “we can tailor ‘take’ prohibitions under section 4d of the Act,” Leslie Gray, Texas Public Affairs Specialist with the Service, told StateImpact Texas.
A “take” is an action that harms, harasses or kills the animal. Continue Reading →
At a speech before the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce today, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst said lawmakers should look into using $1 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to finance water projects this upcoming legislative session. You can watch his remarks above, the funding for water projects starts at the 22 minute mark.
The Rainy Day Fund is a pot of money (currently sitting at about $8 Billion) collected primarily from oil and gas development taxes. It is designed to be very difficult for lawmakers to get their hands on, and is set aside by state law for use only in circumstances like an extreme budget shortfall, or to respond to a natural disaster.
Texas’ current political leadership was reluctant to tap into the fund even at the height of the recent nationwide recession.
It took the driest one-year period in Texas history to convince some in power that it’s time to tap the fund. Today, Dewhurst suggested that Texas’ looming water crisis meets the benchmark to open up the fund. He joins other voices at the state capitol who see funding for water projects as an crucial issue for Texas, but who are unable or unwilling to raise taxes or create other forms of revenue to do it.
An LCRA Tanker truck pumps water into the Spicewood Beach water system. A second truck was destroyed in an accident in October.
We recently brought you an update from Spicewood Beach, the first town in Texas to run out of water in the great Texas drought.
As we reported, things have not gotten much better there, and in some ways they’ve gotten worse. People are moving out, property values have plummeted, and residents face the prospect of nearby lake levels (and, by extension, their water table) dropping even lower, if water is released from the Highland Lakes to rice farmers downstream in January.
You can now add to that list of concerns the loss of one of the trucks that was hauling water into town.
Edith Williams lives with her dog in an apartment in Round Rock. She says she depends on low income assistance from the System Benefit Fund to make ends meet.
“Fiscal transparency” and “cost cutting” are just a few of the buzzwords to watch for as state lawmakers gather in Austin next January for the 83rd Texas legislature. But with all that talk, you might be surprised to learn that there’s a pile of nearly one billion dollars that’s been growing in a state fund for years. And it’s not being used for its intended purpose.
Meet the System Benefit Fund, a pot of 850 million dollars overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. You might already be acquainted with the fund. After all, if you’ve ever paid a bill to a private electric company in Texas, you’ve paid fees into it.
Now meet Miss Edith Williams.
Williams is a 69 year old retired housekeeper. She and her dog live in an apartment in Round Rock, Texas. And she’s one of the hundreds of thousands of people who receive money from the System Benefit Fund to help pay her utility bill. In fact, the day I visited her, she said that I may have found her sitting in the dark if it weren’t for the fund. Continue Reading →
Kate Stein's home in Steiner Ranch was destroyed by fire in 2011.
A report released by the Travis County Fire Marshall last week confirmed what many had already suspected: the Steiner Ranch Fire that destroyed 23 homes during last year’s infamous Labor Day wildfires was started by power lines.
County investigators believe the fire was likely started when high winds caused Austin Energy electrical lines to slap together, throwing molten metal on the dry grass below.
Travis County Fire Marshal Hershel Lee told KUT News that his office had been holding off on releasing the report until other private investigations were completed. But Lee says now he’s not sure when those investigations will be finished. So the Fire Marshall’s office decided to release the report a couple days before Thanksgiving.
“We are hoping that by releasing the information we have that people will have some bit of closure about the cause of the fire,” said Lee.
The fact that this fire, and the two other major fires that weekend, are all linked to power lines could force a re-evaluation of power line upkeep and safety, said Travis County fire Marshall Hershel Lee.
‘For Rent’ and ‘For Sale’ signs are a common sight Spicewood Beach. The community had been without its own source of water since January 2012.
Wanda and Jim Watson retired to Spicewood Beach. They worry what lower lake levels will mean for the community’s future.
The LCRA trucks water into Spicewood Beach. The Agency came under fire for selling Spicewood Beaches water in the runup to the well failure early this year.
Now residents worry what will happen if the Agency sends water to rice farmers downstream, further lowering the lake levels.
One of the LCRA’s tanker trucks got into an accident recently on the road into town.
Glass is still visible from the accident.
Lakes in Spicewood Beach a sign reminds residents of wetter times.
Low reservoir levels, like here at the North end of Lake Travis, have some advocating for storing more water underground, where it won’t evaporate.
Lake levels are related to the levels of the water table in the area. If the lake goes down, more wells could go dry.
‘For Rent’ and ‘For Sale’ signs are a common sight Spicewood Beach. The community had been without its own source of water since January 2012.
Slide show compiled by Filipa Rodrigues
The first indication that things are still not right in Spicewood Beach comes as you reach town. You’re greeted with a welcome sign and a notice that stage four water restrictions remain in effect. It’s been nearly a year since the small Highland Lakes community earned the distinction of being the first town in Texas to run dry during the great drought. The situation remains much the same. In some ways it’s gotten worse.
For one thing, there are a lot more ‘For Sale’ signs in front of a lot more houses.
“There’s vacancies all through here and unbelievably low prices, but there’s not takers. Who wants a house with no water?” asks Jim Watson, sitting next to his wife Wanda in their two story home.
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A controversial proposal from a Mexican company to dig an open pit coal mine near the border town of Eagle Pass will likely go before the Railroad Commission of Texas in January, and odds are it will get the green light.
