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.
Another small earthquake struck outside of Fort Worth last night according to the US Geological Survey. The quake was centered near Mansfield Texas, about 20 miles Southeast of Fort Worth.
While it’s difficult to link any individual quake to a specific cause, North Texas has seen a significant uptick in seismic events since hydraulic fracturing technology opened up the area to widespread oil and gas drilling. Many scientific studies have linked earthquakes to disposal wells used to store drilling liquid, including one out of UT Austin, that StateImpact Texas reported on this summer.
A Red Bull Racing car wins the Korean Formula One Grand Prix in October.
Three model cars sit side-by-side on the windowsill of Zach Baumer’s office in East Austin, memories of a childhood spent with his family at Indy 500 races.
âGrowing up in Indianapolis, I just have sort of a thing for cars,” he says. “Not that I think we should be driving single occupancy vehicles! But … it is what it is.â
There’s a reason Baumer might sound quick to qualify his fondness for horsepower and tight turns. As manager of the city’s Climate Protection Program he’s in charge of mitigating the environmental impact of another well known car race taking place in Austin this fall: the Formula One Grand Prix.
Receding waters have ravaged communities in the Highland Lakes.
Update: The LCRA Board approved the emergency plan with some last-minute tweaks on Wednesday. Read the details here.
Original Story: The LCRA’s plan for emergency drought relief revealed Monday at a board meeting in Fredricksberg has left many upstream interests with a bad taste in their mouths.
The plan is itself a change from an earlier LCRA staff recommendation to not seek drought relief this year. That reversal had buoyed hopes in many Central Texas communities that water would stay in the Highland Lakes as long as they sat depleted from last year’s record drought. But as details of the plan emerged, it became clear that Highland Lake interests had not gotten the plan they wanted.
The lakes are currently only 43 percent full. Under the staff plan unveiled Tuesday, around 145,000 acre feet of water will be released to rice farmers downstream on January 1, as long as the lakes sit around 38 percent full on January first. A second water release could be approved in March if water levels remain at or above that 38 percent level.
In Austin, a work of guerrilla art predicted the gradual desertification of Texas at the height of the 2011 drought.
On Tuesday, we reported on how multiple years of unusually warm weather in Texas has changed attitudes about what’s hot and what’s not.
In a nutshell: people are starting to think of hotter-than-average weather as the new normal here in Texas. This year is a case-in-point: thanks to a warmer-than-usual winter, 2012 is currently on track to be the 4th hottest year (in terms of average temperatures) in Texas. But many people, shell-shocked from last year’s record breaking heat, are thinking of this year as a welcome respite.
A lot of the warming trend has to do with weather patterns that take decades to run their course. Strong and re-occurring La Nina patterns in the Pacific, for example, are in large part responsible for the dry, warm weather that Texas has seen since 2005 (with the exception of two wetter-than-average years). And, as we’ve explained in the past, dry weather in Texas means warm weather. But scientists say global climate change has exacerbated those trends, creating even hotter hot spells and drier dry spells.
Mark Stimak says working in his BBQ trailor during the summer of 2011 was unbearable. This past summer was pretty hot too.
It’s the lunch rush on a warm November afternoon at the Hog Wild BBQÂ food trailer in Austin, and owner Mark Stimak says business is good. This time last year, he remembers, he was still recovering from the dry, hot summer. A summer that, in Austin, brought 90 days of triple-digit heat.
âIt was just unbearable, I was always asking myself, ‘Why am I doing this business?'” he tells StateImpact Texas. “As a matter of fact, trailer food sales were way down that summer because people did not want to come out and sit outside.”
Compared to that experience, Stimak says working the barbecue pit this year was a cake walk. Not that this summer was particularly cool.
“Still, it was ridiculously hot,” he says. “We hit a hundred degrees a couple dozen times, I think.â
In fact, Austin hit triple digits 35 times this year. The average for the city is 13 times. And Austin was not unique. As Texans across the state comforted each other by observing ‘At least it’s not as bad as last year,’ 2012 was shaping up to be another one for the record books.
Photo courtesy of JeffGunn via flickr's creative commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffgunn/
Lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session will be debating ways to fund a water plan that some think is not enough.
When it comes to the cost of the looming water crisis in Texas, the State Water Development Board is ready with some helpful numbers. They are generally big ones.
If the state does nothing to cope with its booming population and dwindling water supply, Texas businesses will lose $116 billion over the next 50 years. The state as a whole will lose more than 1 million jobs.
$53 billion is the price tag of the plan that the Board thinks will avert those losses and assure water security into this century. But the state has never funded the plan.
Water rates are rising across rural Texas, say consumer advocates.
The face of the rural Texas water provider is changing. Jim Boyle, a lawyer with the group Texas Rate Payers United, says years ago most water companies were mom and pop operations, owned by families within the communities they served. Then the great roll-up began.
“We have three or four companies that have come into Texas, one from California, one from Pennsylvania,” he recently told the Texas House Committee on County Affairs. “They’ve come to Texas and they’ve bought hundred of subdivisions systems.”
But it’s not the consolidation that ‘s the problem. According to Boyle, it’s what happens afterwards. He says the companies are raising water rates across the state. When rural customers from unincorporated parts of Texas try to challenge the rate hikes before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, they’re faced with nearly insurmountable financial roadblocks.
Rice farmers downstream of the Lower Colorado may get water for their fields next year.
Once again, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA)Â is coming under fire from some Central Texans. The reason? A recommendation by agency staff that could lead to water being sent downstream next year for rice farming.
The LCRA controls some of the more hotly-contested water in the state of Texas. There is business and real estate upstream that relies on good lake levels to thrive; agriculture, power generation and ecosystems downstream that also need a certain amount of water to get by; and in the middle, the City of Austin. Striking a balance between the many interests and finite resources available for them to share has been an ongoing difficulty in recent years for the agency.
Photo courtesy of A. Seigel www.flickr.com/photos/a_siegel/
AC use is a big driver in electricity usage during the summer in Texas.
I’m as annoyed as the next guy by reductionist cliches about about our state. But sometimes they feel so good, like air conditioning on a hot Texas summer day.
Air conditioning. It’s as Texas as cowboy hats and high school football. But, as we noted ast week, it’s also partially responsible for Texas’ impending electricity shortage. And in other parts of the world, its use is highly regulated to save power. That’s something Texans should consider as they tackle the state’s energy challenges, says Mincheul Kwon, a South Korean journalist visiting Austin from Seoul.
“In South Korea the government regulates indoor temperature in summer,” Kwon says in a report for KUT Austin. “Large commercial and office buildings must maintain a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit or 26 degrees centigrade.”
Warning were attached to bikes locked up outside SXSW Eco today, saying the bikes could be impounded.
South By Southwest Eco is Austin’s premiere sustainability conference, so it’s probably no surprise that you’ll find a lot of bike riders there. The conference even has a folding bike rental option.
But this morning there were so many cyclists parking at the entrance to the AT&T Conference Center, where the event is held, that every nearby signpost appeared to be taken. (There are no bike racks at the Center, or even within a few blocks, according to University of Texas’Â bike rack map.)
So, with nothing apparent to indicate they shouldn’t, cyclists (this reporter included) started locking up on the railings leading to the entrance.
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