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 Bachelorâs Degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University.
Mike Bishop won a temporary retraining order against the Keystone XL pipeline today.
After East Texas landowner Mike Bishop won a temporary restraining order against the Keystone XL pipeline earlier this week, a Nacogdoches County judge reversed that order today.
Ruling in favor of the Canadian company behind the controversial pipeline, TransCanada, Nacogdoches County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz reversed the restraining order, allowing TransCanada to continue construction on Bishop’s land. The two sides will meet in court again next week, when the County holds a hearing on December 19 to hear Bishop’s allegations of fraud against TransCanada. Bishop is also going after the state for permitting the southern portion of the pipeline.
âI didnât pick this fight, but I refuse to sit idly by while a multinational corporation tramples my rights and that of other landowners all along Keystone XLâs path in the name of deepening its profits,â landowner Mike Bishop said in an emailed statement.
Original story, December 11:
A Nacogdoches County Court granted a temporary restraining order to Texas landowner Mike Bishop today. The order will prevent the company TransCanada from building the Keystone XL pipeline on Bishopâs land until a scheduled injunction hearing next week. Continue Reading →
This graph shows how little water has flowed into the Highland Lakes since mid-year.
Mark Dewey of KUT News contributed reporting.
Two high-profile Texas legislators have put the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) on notice this week: if you send water downstream to rice farmers in 2013, there will be consequences. In a letter to the LCRA, Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and Troy Fraser, R-Abilene, urge the LCRA to withdraw the emergency water management plan passed in November. That plan, if approved and followed, would likely result in water being sent down the Lower Colorado to grow rice. Even though it would be a smaller amount than usual, opponents of the plan fear it could be enough to send the Highland Lakes down to drought of record levels.
“We appreciate the letter and understand the concerns expressed by the senators,” the LCRA says in an emailed statement. Acknowledging the extremely dry conditions and low inflows into the lake, the authority says that it is “continuing to closely monitor the situation” and may seek a different emergency drought plan when it meets next month that could result in rice farmers’ water being cut off. Continue Reading →
Update: A 3.0 quake struck Irving on the night of January 22, which you can read about here.Â
The US Geological Survey recorded a small 2.6 magnitude earthquake east of Burleson,Texas earlier tonight, occurring around eight miles deep. The tremor was felt by several people in the area, according to Dallas Morning News. This seismic activity comes just under a month since the last small quake. That measured a 2.3 on the Richter Scale and and was centered near Mansfield, Texas.
While itâs 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 study that StateImpact Texas reported on just last week.
Dr. Charles "Chip" Groat retired early from UT after he became enmeshed in a controversy over a conflict of interest.
Former University of Texas at Austin Professor Charles “Chip” Groat is ready to move on from a controversy about failing to disclose a conflict of interest while at the University. “I will leave this unpleasant episode behind me,” he wrote us in an email last week.
Groat is retiring early from UT and moving to Louisiana, where he will lead the partially taxpayer-funded Water Institute of the Gulf as President and CEO. The institute is a non-profit dedicated to coastal protection and restoration in Louisiana. It received $10 million of initial funding from the state of Louisiana and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. It is intended to “inform decisions on restoration and renewal of gulf coastal areas” and reduce risk and protect the Gulf, according to its website.
The latest forecast from the folks behind the Texas grid is out today, and it shows an improving situation for power in the state, while also noting that we still have a way to go, particularly in times of extreme temperature and emergencies.
âThe projected reserve margin for summer 2013 has dropped slightly since May, but we are seeing healthier reserve margins in future years,â Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) CEO Trip Doggett said in a statement. âAlthough peak demand is expected to grow less quickly than previous economic predictions indicated, we should continue to encourage new generation and develop more demand response options to reduce our electric use during periods of highest use â the hottest hours of the hottest days of summer.â
The number people across the state are watching is known as the reserve margin. That’s the amount of excess power available to the grid on top of what’s generated to meet demand. The grid’s target is 13.75 percent excess power over peak demand. But the new report says that the reserve margin won’t meet that target as early as next summer. It will drop to just over ten percent by 2014, and continue to go down in the future, to less than three percent in 2022. Continue Reading →
Dr. Charles "Chip" Groat says he wants to put the fracking study controversy behind him.
One University of Texas at Austin professor has retired and another has resigned his position as head of UT’s Energy Institute, the school announced Thursday after the release of a scathing review of a study on fracking that has become mired in controversy.
The man at the center of the storm for sitting on the board of a drilling company the entire time, Dr. Charles “Chip” Groat, has declined a request for an interview, but has talked to us about his take on the matter in a series of emails over the last 24 hours. “While I admit that even though my reasons for not disclosing my industry connection were valid in terms of connection to the report results,” Groat writes, “I should have made a disclosure.”
In his most recent email to us, Groat writes, “I donât have anything further to discuss regarding my role in the project.”
Under an Open Records Request, we have obtained Groat’s letter of retirement dated November 21, which you can read in full below. In it, Groat makes no mention of the controversy, instead he writes of his new position as head of the not-for-profit Water Institute of the Gulf in Louisiana, where he and his wife are moving.
UT Professor Charles "Chip" Groat came under fire for not disclosing significant financial ties to the drilling industry, and has resigned from the University.
Resignation and Retirement Result
The long-awaited review of a controversial study on the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” was released today, and it finds numerous errors and flaws with how the study was conducted and released, as well as University of Texas policies for disclosing conflicts of interest.
The head author of the study, Dr. Charles “Chip” Groat, has retired in the wake of the controversy, and the head of the Energy Institute that released it, Dr. Raymond Orbach, has resigned as head of the Institute, the University announced today.
The review finds many problems with the original study, chief among them that Groat did not disclose what it calls a “clear conflict of interest,” which “severely diminished” the study. The study was originally commissioned as a way to correct what it called “controversies” over fracking because of media reports, but ironically ended up as a lightning rod itself for failing to disclose conflicts of interest and for lacking scientific rigor. Continue Reading →
East Texas landowner Mike Bishop is suing a state agency for allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to cross his property.
Mike Bishop is fired up. He’s standing with about a dozen protestors and half that many reporters in front of a state office building, waving a lawsuit in his hands.
âItâs beyond me why regulatory agencies and elected officials canât say, âYou know what? I made a mistake. Iâm so sorry. You know what weâre going to do? Weâre going to correct that mistake.'” he intones, slamming his fists.
Bishop is unhappy with how state agencies are handling pipelines in Texas, specifically the Keystone XL pipeline, which will soon cross his land in Nacodoches County.
A coal miner at a Mitt Romney campaign rally at American Energy Corportation on August 14, 2012 in Beallsville, Ohio.
One of the few coal power plants still being planned in Texas is facing setbacks.
The controversial White Stallion Energy Center in Matagorda County had been working with the Texas grid to examine how it will work once its completed, a process called a grid interconnection study. Itâs a typical requirement for new power plants, along with an air permit. But earlier this fall the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) cancelled that study.
âThat process has taken longer than we anticipated,” Randy Bird, the Chief Operating Officer for the coal power project. “And most of the delay was on our side. Because of market conditions.â
Those market conditions are making coal power unattractive in Texas, and the nation. Low prices for natural gas (thanks to the widespread adoption of hyrdaulic fracturing, or “fracking”) and declining accessibility and quality of domestic coal have made natural gas the preferred option for new power. Continue Reading →
A Texas scientist dubiously claims she's sequenced Bigfoot's DNA. So is it legal to kill him/it now?
Update, 2/14/13: The second week of February, Ketchum released her paper claiming to have sequenced Sasquatch DNA. It was published in a ‘scientific journal’ created only a week earlier. You can read more over at the Houston Chronicle.
You may have read some dubious new claims by a Texas “scientist” that Bigfoot is real. Nacogdoches veterinarian Melba Ketchum (who claims to also be a a scientist in “Forensics and Hominid Research” on her Twitter profile) announced this week that her company, DNA Diagnostics, has successfully sequenced the DNA of not just one, but several Bigfoots. (Or is that Bigfeet?)
Using DNA apparently found from hair, blood and tissue samples, Ketchum says she’s sequenced Bigfoot. Those samples may have come from cryptid enthusiast Robin Lynne, who claims to have several Sasquatch roaming the land around her Michigan property. She says … wait for it … she’s enticed them there with blueberry bagels.
The news is even being covered by major outlets like CNN, FOX and TIME. (For a robust, skeptical take on the new claims, check out Eric Berger’s solid debunking in the Houston Chronicle.)
But if Bigfoot were indeed real, and you were out hunting in Texas, it may surprise you to know that you have some options once you encounter him/her/it.
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