Terrence Henry reports on energy and the environment for StateImpact Texas. His radio, print and television work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, The Texas Tribune, The History Channel and other outlets.
He has previously worked at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
Drought is forecast to continue in hard-hit areas of the state.
The rain in South Texas has been fickle this spring. “Oh, we’ve had some rain,” says Ed Walker, Manager of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District. “But it’s been an inch here, a half-inch there. It’s really dry.”
Walker’s work involves managing the underground water in the counties of Dimmit, La Salle and Zavala, a part of the state in the worst stages of drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor Map out today.
Ranchers are finding they need to lower the pumps in their livestock and irrigation wells, Walker says, as water tables drop. But “the lower the pumps get, the more it costs to pump [water]. And the deeper the pumps are, the less they work.”
According to a new federal forecast out today, over the next three months the drought is likely to continue in Walker’s region, and develop in other parts of South and West Texas. The eastern half of the state, however, is predicted to improve, and cease completely in some regions: Continue Reading →
The extreme drought and 2011 releases to farmers lowered levels in Lakes Buchanan and Travis (pictured) in Central Texas. Now a state agency is saying more study is needed into how the reservoirs are managed.
In the ongoing battle over water in the Highland Lakes of Central Texas, the City of Austin and lake residents and businesses scored something of a victory this week when the state told the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) that its water management plan will need more review.
The LCRA manages the water in the Highland Lakes, including the main reservoirs of Buchanan and Travis, which are vital sources of water for Austin. Until 2012, those reservoirs also provided massive amounts of water for rice farmers downstream. In 2011 — the driest year in Texas’ recorded history — Â the LCRA, under its existing management plan, released three times as much water to the rice farmers from the lakes as Austin used from them that entire year. (Last year and this year, under emergency plans, the LCRA cut off most rice farmers from water for irrigation.)
In 2012, the LCRA came up with an updated plan that would have helped prevent such releases of water during times of extreme drought. But it had to be approved by the state environmental agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). After reviewing the proposed plan and hearing opposition from the public as well as some prominent politicians, the state agency is saying that the water management plan needs more work. Specifically, it needs to reflect the drier times affecting Texas and include more recent data. Continue Reading →
The Texas grid is forecasting a dry, hotter-than-normal summer. This map shows what percentage of normal rainfall different parts of the state can expect.
Sno Cone stands are open, school’s almost out, and thermometers across the state are getting closer and closer to reading a hundred, if they haven’t already. As another summer approaches, Texans are wondering what kind of season is in store.
If the forecasts of meteorologist Chris Coleman turn out to be correct, this summer may well be a hot one, though not as bad as the record-breaking summer of 2011. Coleman is the new meteorologist for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages the power grid that serves most of the state.
He was brought on six months ago to develop forecasts for the grid’s managers. As power supplies tighten, and the state’s population grows (along with hotter-than-normal summers), Texas finds itself with shrinking margins of reserve power in case something goes wrong on the grid. And power demand is forecast to reach a record level this summer in Texas, even though temperatures aren’t likely to be as hot as they were in 2011.
While forecasting isn’t new to ERCOT (it’s been contracted out for the most part up until now), Coleman hopes to bring a more robust approach, using more data than before. “I’m working to see how accurate the forecasts in place were, and adding my forecast to the mix,” Coleman said Friday at a meeting held by the Gulf Coast Power Association. “Every forecaster has their own approach.”
There have been two constant questions ever since the record heat and drought of 2011, Coleman says: Will we have another 2011? And how long will the drought continue? Continue Reading →
Tesla plans to have six super-charging stations in Texas within the next six months, with more to come.
The luxury electric car company Tesla announced plans today to rapidly expand its network of “super-charging stations” across the country, including a number of spots in Texas. But the company still can’t sell to consumers in Texas directly, despite a strong effort to lobby state lawmakers to change the rules.
The charging stations are meant to allow drivers to go from city to city, and the company is planning to put them outside of Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. In fact, the company plans to add so many charging stations that within six months, they say it will be possible to travel from Los Angeles to New York in a Tesla. The stations charge a car for 20 to 30 minutes, allowing a Tesla S to run for around three hours of driving, and are free for Tesla owners. (Other electric cars, however, cannot charge at the stations.) That’s significantly faster than existing public charging stations in Texas, but Tesla’s East Coast network of charging stations was negatively reviewed in the New York Times earlier this year. And that review was subsequently criticized by the paper’s public editor. Regardless, the controversy doesn’t appear to have slowed Tesla down: the company posted its first profitable quarter recently, earned a near-perfect score from Consumer Reports for the Model S, and paid off its federal loans nine years early.
Water was one of the big topics this legislative session, as a growing state faced strained supplies and year after year of drought. Well before things kicked off this year, a plan surfaced to take $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to start a water bank that would fund pipelines, reservoirs, conservation and more. That plan had widespread support, yet still faced opposition from Tea Party conservatives in the House. Ultimately, a mix of bills was put together to start the water bank and reform the agency that will oversee it, the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB). But not so fast.
While Governor Rick Perry signed off on a big part of the plan earlier this week with HB 4, there’s one catch: in order for the bank to get up and running, voters will have to approve it. There wasn’t enough will in the legislature to break the state’s spending cap and spend the money themselves, so instead voters will be making that decision on the ballot this November.
How’d we get to this California-esque decision? KUT’s Ben Philpott tells the tale of how Texas lawmakers decided to take a gamble and put the choice to voters this fall in what’s likely to be a low-turnout, off-year election: Continue Reading →
Lawmakers made good on a promise to fund the state's water plan, but a crucial part of that plan is subject to voter approval.
After days of negotiations, amendments and Star Wars references, the Texas legislature has finally put together a mechanism to start seriously funding water infrastructure and conservation in the state. But there’s a big “if” — voters still have to approve a crucial part of the plan this November. (For more on the details, read our earlier story on the plan.)
While many legislators and lobbying groups — from farmers to drillers to environmentalists — largely supported the plan to fund water projects, there was opposition from the Tea Party on infrastructure spending. Here’s some of the reactions to the water plan funding from groups for and against:
Lavaca Bay in Calhoun County is one proposed site for an LNG Terminal.
As a drilling boom continues in Texas and other states, the U.S. finds itself with so much natural gas that some companies now want to export domestic fuels abroad.
Today, the federal Department of Energy (DOE) announced approval of a second facility, the Freeport LNG Terminal on Quintana Island, to export natural gas in liquid form to countries not party to free trade agreements with the U.S. That would mean that gas-hungry markets like Japan could start buying natural gas from Texas ports at much higher rates than domestic consumers.
In an interesting twist, many of these facilities for exporting natural gas already exist: they were built in recent years to import natural gas from other countries, before a fracking boom unlocked domestic supplies. The Freeport terminal only started construction in 2005. By the time it was up and running in 2008 to import natural gas, the fossil fuel balance in the U.S. had started to turn upside down. Now there’s a rush to undergo an expensive (roughly $5 billion per plant) conversion at these plants to send gas out instead of bring it in. Continue Reading →
At the Texas legislature, some things don’t stay dead for long. As time runs out for lawmakers to move dollars towards funding water, roads and education, it appears that for water, at least, an agreement may be in the works. Continue Reading →
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.
A name change and several ethics reforms on the table this legislative session for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees oil and gas drilling in the state, have died.
The Texas Energy Report was the first with the news, tweeting this afternoon: “RAILROAD COMMISSION SUNSET DEAD FOR THIS SESSION.”
After a lengthy review of the agency, required by state law under the Sunset review process, the Railroad Commission will continue instead with the same name and without any reforms. So what happened?
For one, there were conflicting ideas on how to reform the commission. A more industry-friendly plan in the House, HB 2166 by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, which ended up being stripped of many of its reforms (and ultimately a name change) didn’t ever make it out of the House.
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 →
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