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.
The Lower Colorado river is suffering from low oxygen levels. Is the drought to blame?
Some high school ecological enthusiasts have collected new data showing the Lower Colorado river ecosystem might be in jeopardy.
The river not only supplies much of Texas with its drinking water, it’s also a cherished destination for summer recreation. But all is not well on the Colorado, and authorities might not have known about the scope of the river’s troubles without the students’ research.
For about 20 years, the Austin Youth River Watch, an environmental education program, has organized groups of teens to monitor the water quality of the Colorado. Every week they check water at different parts of the river and its tributaries. And lately they’ve been getting some unusual readings.
“We’ve been picking up low levels of oxygen over the past few weeks and we’re pretty concerned,” says Brent Lyles, Executive Director of River Watch. He says the group is working with the City of Austin and the Lower Colorado River Authority to figure out why oxygen levels might be dropping. “If not for our students’ work, I’m not sure anyone would know this is happening,” he says.
Less oxygen could spell trouble for fish and other wildlife. And the group has already observed a large number of dead Asian clams in the river, a troubling sign of what happens when oxygen levels get low. Continue Reading →
Leslie Hartman is the Matagorda Bay Ecosystem Leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Drought looks different along the Texas coast. When you hear the cries of seagulls and the roll of the surf you might be forgiven for thinking that nothing is wrong at all. But as last year’s drought pushed through the summer, the Colorado River brought less and less fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico and the state bay systems suffered. In Matagorda Bay, where the river empties into the sea oyster harvesting was shut down and fishermen reported fewer crabs and fish.
As part of StateImpact Texas’ reporting for Life By the Drop: Drought, Water and the Future of Texas, StateImpact’s Mose Buchele sat down with Leslie Hartman, the Matagorda Bay Ecosystem Leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to talk drought and water issues along the coast. Continue Reading →
Al Armendariz was the regional administrator for the EPA.
Al Armendariz, the former EPA Region Six administrator who resigned after controversy erupted over remarks he made about EPA enforcement, will join the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, according to a statement released by the Sierra Club this afternoon.
Armendariz oversaw the EPA in Texas during a tense era in the state’s relationship with the federal agency. He became a lighting rod for criticism from state industry, while attracting kudos from environmentalists for going after polluters in Texas.
His opponents found a powerful weapon against him when a video was unearthed of him equating his strategies for enforcing environmental regulations to the tactics of the ancient roman empire.
Armendariz resigned, he said, to save the EPA from controversy stemming from those remarks.
The Colorado River winds it's way near the town of Robert Lee. The town's reservoir dried up last year and water is now pumped in by pipeline.
Running from headwaters near New Mexico, the Colorado cuts southeast through Texas, feeding cities, farms, power plants and ecosystems before flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the longest river to start and end all within the state of Texas.
In good years, its water is enough to sustain communities at every point as it cuts its course through the state. 2011 was not a good year.
To hear the voices of people who depend on the Colorado for their lives and livelihoods is not just to hear about the drought of 2011. It teaches us about the looming water crisis that faces Texas. If trends continue, our state will keep growing but our water supplies will stay the same, or even diminish. Continue Reading →
The 737 area code will be introduced to the area in July of 2013 because the supply of 512 numbers is running out.
“Out of the top ten fastest growing large cities six of them are in Texas, including Austin,” remarked PUC Chair Donna Nelson before the vote. “With growth comes all sorts of unique opportunities and one of those is to have anew area code for Austin.”
This morning Public Utility Commission Chair Donna Nelson and Commissioner Rolando Pablos voted to approve an increase in the price cap for wholesale electricity in Texas. Commissioner Kenneth Anderson, Jr. abstained.
Before today’s vote, the wholesale price of electricity had been capped at $3,000 per megawatt hour. Under the new rule that will rise to $4,500. It’s meant to make the business of selling power in Texas more profitable. Supporters say that’s necessary to encourage investment in new power plants.
“We don’t require the building of generation in Texas. We set up the market forces so that generators want to come to Texas,” PUC Chair Donna Nelson told StateImpact Texas after the vote.
Commissioner Anderson, the one abstaining vote, had long been skeptical of raising the cap this year. Before the vote he argued again that the price hike would not impact power plant construction by the end of the summer.
Still image taken from video posted to Flikr Creative Commons by Waifer X. http://www.flickr.com/photos/waiferx/2658307394/
A seismograph measures feet stomping nearby at the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum in Hawaii
Three earthquakes in six days. Those were the surprising numbers that greeted Texans on Monday morning. What’s becoming less surprising is the notion that they could have been man-made. All three of the quakes (two near Dallas, one around San Antonio) happened near areas with extensive oil and gas excavation.
A scientific consensus is forming around the notion that wastewater disposal wells, a common byproduct of oil and gas drilling, are causing quakes. As that understanding grows, the debate has moved from what is causing the quakes to what policymakers should do about it. Continue Reading →
The court upheld an EPA regulation aimed at curbing emissions linked to global climate change.
Today a federal appeals court upheld the first ever federal regulations aimed at reducing emissions of gases blamed for global warming. The unanimous ruling came over challenges from industry groups and around a dozen states, including Texas.
Environmental groups lauded the decision. In a statement released early this afternoon, the Environmental Defense Fund singled out one section of the ruling that appeared to chastise the petitioners for downplaying the science behind climate change research.
Opponents of the regulations had claimed that the EPA had “delegated” the responsibility of proving that emissions were linked to climate change by relying on information from third parties. In it’s ruling the court called such a claim “little more than a semantic trick.”
The ruling continued “this is how science works. EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.” Continue Reading →
So far in our special report on Texas water issues, we’ve heard from communities along the Colorado River that survive with its water. But what about the Colorado itself? Does a river have a right to flow? People in Texas bays and coastal areas that depend on fresh water inflows might answer in the affirmative.
As last year’s drought pushed through the summer, the Colorado brought less and less fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. In Matagorda Bay, where the river empties into the sea, the water quality suffered. Oyster harvesting was shut down and fishermen reported fewer crabs and fish in the bay. Continue Reading →
2011 was not only Texas’ worst single-year drought. By a strange twist of fate, it was also the year the state formed its new long-term water plan. Some planners viewed this as a blessing-in-disguise: as least the drought was raising awareness of water issues.
The planning process forced some hard questions: what role will agriculture play in the future of Texas? Should Texans continue to raise water-intensive crops like corn and rice? Continue Reading →
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