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.
Billy Mann says he can survive one year without a crop, but worries about the effect it will have on the many businesses that rely on rice farming
There was a lot of action on the state level in the last week, with the Supreme Court of Texas reinforcing an earlier opinion that sides with landowners fighting claims of eminent domain by pipeline companies on their land. We also analyzed another recent decision by the Court on groundwater, and looked at the past and future of the current Texas drought. In case you missed them, here are the top five stories from StateImpact Texas in the last week:
Photo by Flickr user pedrosimoes7/Creative Commons
The reinstated restraining order prevents the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline from entering a Texas farmer's land.
Just a week ago, a temporary restraining order taken out by a farmer in northeast Texas against the company building the Keystone XL pipeline was dissolved. But late on Friday this week, that restraining order was reinstated by an appellate court.
The landowner fighting the pipeline is Julia Trigg Crawford, who owns a farm in Lamar County, northeast of Dallas. As we reported in an earlier story, her family has been there since the forties, where they grow soybeans, corn and wheat. A few years back, TransCanada approached her family about running the Keystone XL pipeline through her farm. The controversial pipeline would take unconventional oil deposits from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. “Well, we didn’t sign initially, and it’s kinda drug on and on,” she told StateImpact Texas. “Each year they sent another letter saying there’ll be more money to kinda sweeten the pot.”
After Crawford repeatedly refused to allow TransCanada onto her land, the company sought eminent domain last fall. Crawford is appealing that claim of eminent domain in a court hearing scheduled for late April.
The reinstated restraining order this week from the Court of Appeals, Sixth Appellate District in Texarkana says that TransCanada “is restrained from entering on the Crawford Family Farm Partnership land and from performing any and all on-site activities that disturb the surface or subsurface of the land.” TransCanada has five days to respond to the restraining order. Continue Reading →
How much trash is hiding beneath the surface in Austin? You'd be surprised.
For a city that prides itself on being green, many Austinites may be surprised to learn that they’re living next to trash buried decades ago. For Reporting Texas, a digital journalism initiative at the University of Texas, StateImpact Texas intern David Barer reports on hidden landfills in Austin that hold “everything from banana peels to microwaves and, in one case, medical test monkeys buried in plastic bags:”
“Many old landfills around Austin operated before stringent regulations existed. Materials placed in those dumps were not divided into hazardous and non-hazardous groups, nor did they use plastic liners to stop the spread of toxic materials or plastic caps to close inactive landfills.
The inactive landfills date back more than 80 years in some cases. They are often positioned near creek beds, parks and aquifers. Yet few Austinites, including city officials, know exactly where the landfills are or what they contain.”
Photo by Flickr user Stuck in Customs/Creative Commons
Pipeline companies are finding themselves with a new obstacle: defenders of private property rights.
Dave Fehling of StateImpact Texas contributed reporting to this article.
The Texas Supreme Court sure is busy as of late. Today they released an updated opinion in the Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas case that could have big implications for the oil and gas industry and private landowners in Texas. The bottom line is this: the court reinforced their original ruling today and denied a request to hear the case again, and that’s unwelcome news for the pipeline industry in Texas.
The decision was originally made last fall. At issue was who decides whether or not a pipeline is a “common carrier,” i.e. one that can be used by other companies and is therefore considered a public project. If a pipeline company can justify that it’s a public project, that allows it to use eminent domain to construct and operate pipelines on private property, regardless of how the landowner affected may feel about it. (Read more on the case in our earlier story, Pipeline Companies Fight for Right to Take Property.)
In the Denbury decision, as it’s come to be known, the Texas Supreme Court sided with landowners, stating that “private property is constitutionally protected, and a private enterprise cannot acquire condemnation power merely by checking boxes on a one-page form.” That one-page form is what pipeline companies send to the Railroad Commission of Texas in order to get “common carrier” status, which is what they use to justify their use of eminent domain.
Today’s opinion strengthens the court’s siding with landowners. Continue Reading →
Justin Bieber, the babyfaced heartthrob coming to a “Tiger Beat” near you, joined the ranks of adulthood Thursday. The singer turned 18, and for his birthday his manager got him a special present.
“I always yell at you, don’t get anything flashy, be humble,” Bieber’s manager Scott Braun told him on the Ellen DeGeneres show yesterday. “And I kinda broke my own rule.”
And then in a move reminiscent of the Showcase Showdown, Bieber looked across the stage and saw his new gift: the Fisker Karma, a plug-in roadster that starts at over $100,000. The car can go 32 miles on the electric charge alone, but it also has a gas combustion engine that gives it a combined range of 230 miles. It’s also notable for the solar panel on its roof, which the company says can add up to four or five miles of juice in a given week.
“We decided to get you an environmentally friendly car,” his manager told him. Â Continue Reading →
The drought has affected Texans across the state. Haskell Simon, a rice farmer in Bay City, could go without water a third year in a row.
The intake from the Lower Colorado River sends water into irrigation canals. This year it will sit idle.
Rice farmers in southeast Texas like Billy Mann may face another year of little to no water from the Highland Lakes for irrigation.
Joe Crane in front of his rice drying and storgage plant in Bay City, Texas.
Many rice mills and drying and storage facilities in Southeast Texas didn’t see much work last year. If they’re cut off again this year, the slow business will continue.
As the clock struck midnight Thursday, many rice farmers across southeast Texas had to face a sobering reality: for the first time in history, they will not have water for their crops. “It saddens me because like I said, my family’s been farming rice since 1905,” says rice farmer Paul Sliva. “This will be the first year we haven’t. There’s no other crop than rice for me. It’s gonna be a weird year. It’s gonna be a sad year for me.”
The lakes that hold that water mean different things to different people. For the people that live on the lakes – and many of whom make their living off of them – they’re a boon to property values and business. But when massive amounts of water were sent downstream to rice farmers last year, more than three times the amount used by all of Austin, in the midst of a record drought no less, the lakes neared historic lows. And that hurt the lake interests, like the construction company owned by Buster Cole. He says rice farmers don’t appreciate the financial impact of their withdrawals from the lake.
“They have no respect for the impact of what’s happening on our Highland Lakes, from economic property values, business owners, all the things involved,” Cole says. “Everybody’s involved in this, and it’s bad.” Continue Reading →
Welcome back to your weekly drought update. Every Thurdsay, the National Drought Monitor releases the latest data (collected each Tuesday), which provides a handy snapshot of where things are.
And as of today, they’re pretty much in the same place they were last week. Not much improvement, but things haven’t gotten much worse, either:
A portion of southwest Texas went from the “extreme” stage of drought to the highest level of drought, “exceptional.”
Much of the rest of Texas is in the same spot it was last week. Six percent of the state is still drought-free, while nearly 15 percent of Texas is in the worst stage of drought, “exceptional” (up from 14 percent last week).
A deadline is looming for many rice farmers in southeast Texas. If there isn’t 850,000 acre-feet of water in the Highland Lakes by midnight tonight, the Lower Colorado River Authority will not be sending water downstream for rice farmers this year. In this video by Jeff Heimsath for StateImpact Texas, we travel to Bay City, Texas to hear firsthand what this cutoff would mean for rice farmers and the businesses that depend on them. “We certainly don’t have any expectations of making any money,” says Joe Crane, who runs a rice mill in Bay City. “We’re just hoping to hold on.”
The combined storage of Lakes Buchanan and Travis, which typically hold much of the water for rice farmers, is at 846,800 feet as of 8 a.m. today. (An acre-foot of water is a volume measurement equal to about 325,800 gallons of water.) If more than 3,000 acre-feet of water — the equivalent of around a billion gallons — doesn’t come into the lakes by midnight tonight, most rice farmers will lose their season entirely.
For a while it looked like it was going to be really close. While just weeks ago the lakes held only 767,000 acre-feet, after heavy rains they rose rapidly. But those inflows slowly dropped, and for the last week have averaged only about 1,000 acre-feet of water a day. As of Tuesday morning, the lakes were at 842,000 acre-feet, leaving many rice farmers to give up hope, knowing it would take at least a week to get to the levels they needed.
And then, out of nowhere, the levels suddenly went up overnight Tuesday, reaching 846,000 acre-feet by Wednesday morning. If they could go up 4,000 acre-feet in a day, and there was still almost two days left before the deadline, perhaps there’s a chance after all, many thought.
But where did that water suddenly come from? It certainly didn’t rain. The Highland Lakes region has seen no more than a tenth of an inch of rain in the last week. Continue Reading →
Just how did the company beat the restraining order?
TransCanada’s motion to dissolve it (embedded below) outlines the argument that won over the judge. Under Texas law, temporary restraining orders can’t be given unless the “adverse party” (in this case, TransCanada) is given notice. The exception is if “immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to the applicant before notice can be served.” Crawford’s attorney argued that Caddo Indian artifacts on her land would be damaged, but TransCanada’s assurance that they wouldn’t appears to have won over the judge.
The company argues that since it had deposited twice the amount of the money it feels is fair market value for the land with the court, it was entitled to proceed with condemnation of Crawford’s property. In its motion, TransCanada estimates the amount it owes Crawford for the land and damages is $10,395.
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