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.
Wind turbines in West Texas help produce record amounts of electricity for the state.
Another record was set for wind power generation this week, according to the group that manages much of the state’s power. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) says Wednesday evening, wind power generation on the grid reached10,296 megawatts (MW), or enough to power 5 million Texas homes during times of regular demand. That beat the previous record of actual generation by 600 megawatts, roughly the equivalent of a medium-sized fossil fuel power plant.
A few hours later, early Thursday morning, almost a third of the power on the grid also came from wind power, primarily from turbines in the Panhandle and along the Gulf Coast. It’s the third time this month that wind generation broke previous records.
ERCOT credits both a breezy week and the recent addition of a transmission line project known as the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) that was designed to bring wind power from West Texas and the Panhandle to consumers in Central and North Texas. Continue Reading →
Landowner Julia Trigg Crawford on her family farm in Northeast Texas along the Oklahoma border.
A challenge to state law that allows private companies to take land for pipelines will not be heard by the Supreme Court of Texas. Julia Trigg Crawford, a Northeast Texas landowner has been fighting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline for several years. Crawford has lost several rounds and appeals in her case that argues her land had been illegally condemned through eminent domain by the pipeline company TransCanada.
As the case has made its way through the courts, TransCanada legally went ahead with construction and began operation of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline through Crawford’s land earlier this year.
“There is apparently a last ask we can make, to ask if the Supreme Court would reconsider their denial,” Crawford says. “But after that, there’s no other step in Texas court.”
Michael Fossum of the Austin Heritage Tree Foundation stands in front of the heritage Live Oak known as the "Taco Bell Tree." Fossum and his group fought to save the tree from being cut down for a traffic project. Now it's going to be moved across the street.
Back in the 1970s and ’80s, it probably looked like something out of Dazed and Confused. Teenagers pulling up in T-Birds, wind in their hair, to hang out in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. The sun would set in the Hill Country to the west, sending a glow through the branches of an old Live Oak tree. Today the Taco Bell and the teenagers are long gone, but the tree remains, affectionately known as the “Taco Bell Tree.”
It’s also now at an intersection best known for being a traffic nightmare – the Y at Oak Hill – where two highways intersect and a third road feeds into the jumble. In order to improve that intersection, the state embarked on a temporary plan to expand it that would help for the next five years, while something longer term is put into place. The plan included cutting down the Taco Bell Tree, which has been here long before drive-thrus (or even combustion engines).All right, all right, all right.
Texas trees have to be hardy. There are Live Oaks along the Gulf Coast that survived Hurricane Katrina while buildings around them toppled; those trees probably survived other storms long before that. But as the Lone Star State grows, it needs more roads. More homes. More developments. The big trees are now coming into conflict with a state that can’t help keep getting bigger. And the trees can either be cut down, built around, or, as in the case of the Taco Bell Tree, they can be moved. At a hefty price. Continue Reading →
We’re coming up on four years since the worst accidental oil spill in history: the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Over two hundred million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf. Eleven men were killed in the blast, all from a tight-knit group of rig workers. A film premiering at the SXSW Film Festival this week focuses on the effects of the disaster on the survivors and their families, adding a human dimension missing from much of the coverage of the spill. It’s called ‘The Great Invisible.’
If you want to learn more about what exactly went wrong on the rig, and what could have been done to prevent it, this film will leave you wondering. Its subjects talk about staff reductions and corners being cut on the rig, but specifics are sparse — it doesn’t really explain what went wrong that day, or even what a “blowout” is. But where ‘The Great Invisible’ shines is by casting light on the human victims of the industrial disaster.
Director Margaret Brown said at a Q&A after the film’s first screening in Austin that she “wanted to use people, not graphs” to tell the story. “We lost the opportunity to talk about the lessons of the disaster because of political pressure.” (Brown’s representatives declined an interview request from StateImpact Texas to discuss the film.) Continue Reading →
“The Fate of Humankind Rests Upon These Genetic Resources”
On a hillside in Norway near the North Pole sits a large, angular vault jutting out of the mountain. It’s an area so cold there are literally signs warning of polar-bear crossings on the roads nearby. Inside this icy vault? Nearly a million types of seeds, frozen to be preserved for the next few thousand years.
Think of it as a Noah’s Ark for climate change, a way to preserve existing crops that could be lost in a warming world. The man who led the effort to create it, Cary Fowler, is the subject of a new film premiering at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin this week, called ‘Seeds of Time.’ I sat down with Fowler and the director of the film, Sandy McLeod, to hear more about it. Take a listen to our conversation:
Texas is facing an invasion of feral hogs. Can an app help?
The SXSW Interactive conference, also known as the week that launches a thousand apps, begins today. Start-ups will be pitching their app as The One to Out-Social Them All, whether it’s an app that helps you avoid humans, or, in case you’ve encountered too many humans, an app that can help you get tested for STDs.
But an app with a special impact for Texans outside the throng of techies is being promoted today, too. It’s to help farmers, ranchers and landowners better deal with the epidemic of invasive feral hogs.
“Epidemic” isn’t overstating it. According to research by Texas A&M Agrilife, there are at least an estimated 2,6 million feral hogs in the Lone Star State, doing $52 million of damage every year. The hogs cause car accidents, destroy crops and land, and threaten waterways. And, like the many people moving here, they love Texas: almost 80 percent of the state is a suitable habitat for the hogs, according to Agrilife.
So how to get rid of them? That’s where the 99-cent Texas A&M Feral Hog Management app comes in. It will give you a recipe for feral hog bait, or show you how to build a snare. Or if you really want to make the most out of your hog-killing experience, there’s even a section on “pork-chopping,” the expensive (and arguably ineffective) practice of hunting feral hogs by helicopter. Continue Reading →
Update: TxDOT told the Houston Chronicle Thursday that they’re redesigned the road they’re building in Snook to avoid cutting down the Live Oaks that are hundreds of years old. The 103-year old Live Oak in Austin known as the “Taco Bell Tree” is still days away from a deadline to be moved, however. The Austin Heritage Tree Foundation is raising money to move the tree, but still needs thousands of dollars. “We have high expectations and hopes we’ll meet that goal,” Michael Fossum with the foundation says.
Original story: More than a thousand people a day are moving to Texas, and they have needs: Homes. Water. And roads. It’s that last bit where a unique part of Texas history and beauty is under threat from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).
“Four of 10 trees on land owned by Regina McCurdy’s family for almost 150 years – oak trees estimated to be 200 to 300 years old and rare for this flat patch of Texas – are about to be cut down because transportation officials say they need to build a bypass around Snook, population 511 as of the 2010 census. The town is a few miles southwest of College Station.”
A similar battle is taking place in Austin, where a 130-year old Heritage Live Oak, known to locals as the “Taco Bell Tree,” is weeks away from potentially being cut down by TxDOT to expand an intersection. The Austin Heritage Tree Foundation has until March 17 to begin moving the tree, but needs to raise thousands more dollars first. Continue Reading →
"There's nothing in this world more serious than a comedian when he's telling the truth," Kinky Friedman says.
It’s possible that come November, voters will get to choose between a pro-weed Jewish troubadour and a horse scandal-plagued businessman with Ted Nugent as his treasurer in the race for Agriculture Commissioner. Both primaries for Agriculture Commissioner are headed for a runoff on May 27.
On the Democratic side, poll watchers were surprised to see Jim Hogan, a cattle rancher from Cleburne who raised zero dollars for the race and spent few more, in the lead with 39 percent (with 84 percent of precincts reporting). That’s despite having little to no profile in the race. (Many of the state’s Democratic heavyweights endorsed Hugh Fitzsimmons, who is placing a distant third.)
Hogan will likely face Richard “Kinky” Friedman, who’s running on a platform of hemp and pot legalization, and who state Democrats had actively tried to stop from winning. Friedman wasn’t far behind Hogan, getting 38 percent of the vote (with 84 percent of precincts reporting). We talked to Friedman about his plans to turn Texas “green” in February:
Tomorrow is primary day in Texas, and in the race for the open seat on the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, you might be curious to know where exactly the candidates stand on the issues. Those issues include swarms of earthquakes linked to oil and gas drilling activity; property rights battles with pipeline companies; and potential ethics reforms for the commissioners.
In a series of articles last week, we rounded up the candidates positions on these and other issues. Six of the candidates for Railroad Commissioner responded to our questionnaire, but three of the candidates, Republicans Malachi Boyuls, Wayne Christian and Ryan Sitton did not respond.
Each question below links to the candidates’ answers:
The primary is tomorrow, March 4. Unless one of the candidates receives more than fifty percent of the vote in each party, the top two candidates will go to a runoff, with voting on May 27.
Disposal wells like this one are the point where a small operation could turn out to be causing big tremors that can be felt miles away.
Texas has seen the number of recorded earthquakes increase tenfold since 2007, the same time a drilling boom spurred by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” took off. Scientific studies of those quakes has linked many of them to oil and gas drilling activity. In North and East Texas, peer-reviewed studies have pointed the finger at oil and gas wastewater disposal wells, where fluids from drilling are injected underground. The state oil and gas regulator has been slow to respond to the phenomenon, maintaining that links between the quakes and oil and gas activity are “hypothetical.”
But that’s beginning to change after residents of the towns of Azle and Reno in North Texas got vocal about the earthquakes in their region. It’s seen over 30 earthquakes since the beginning of November, and in response, the Railroad Commission has announced it’s hiring a seismologist to study the issue. A committee of lawmakers will be doing so as well. Other states have been more active in their approach to the issue, however.
In our third installment of questions for the candidates for Railroad Commissioner, we asked each of them where they stand on the science and potential solutions to the tremors. We reached out to candidates from all parties, but three of the Republican candidates did not participate. (Again, Malachi Boyuls, Wayne Christian and Ryan Sitton — we’d still like to hear back from you.)
The six candidates that did respond had varying answers and views on the quakes and regulating disposal wells: Continue Reading →
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