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.
The extreme drought has lowered levels in Lake Travis to the point where rice farmers downstream may soon be cut off.
Who deserves water more? The first one in line, or the one who stands to lose the most financially if it’s taken away? That’s one way of looking at the ongoing “water war” on the Lower Colorado River between rice farmers in Southeast Texas and residents and businesses along the Highland Lakes upstream from them. Caught in the middle? The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which manages the water in the lakes. Today they are voting on a water plan that would change how water is managed on the river.
The plan would add a second cutoff date to determine whether there’s enough water for rice farmers downstream, which would likely mean more years without water from the lakes for the farmers. The farmers will likely not get water this spring because of low lake levels. “In the future, farmers will have to grow more pounds per acre on more marginal land, it looks like with less water,” longtime rice farmer Billy Mann testified during public comment on the plan Tuesday. “Can we do it? We’re going to have to, but hopefully we will have the water there for us.”
Residents and businesses on the Highland Lakes have been pushing for changing how water is used and paid for on the Lower Colorado. “I got to tell you, it’s really hard for me to be speaking here today, because we are staring down the devastation of the drought of 2011,” Janet Caylor of the Central Texas Water Coalition said. “And as y’all are aware, there have already been multiple bankruptcies, loss of jobs; many are struggling to stay in business.” Continue Reading →
Spicewood Beach resident L.J. Honeycutt says his plan is to "drink less water and drink more beer"
Seizures of land and seizures of the heart. This week on StateImpact Texas, we looked at why a Texas town ran dry (and who could be next), how pipeline companies are using eminent domain to take over private land, and what a Masterpiece Theatre television show set in the past can teach us about the future. In case you missed any of them, here are the top five new stories from StateImpact Texas over the last week:
Defending the Keystone XL Pipeline:Â We sat down recently to speak with Jim Prescott, a project representative for TransCanada, about the company’s views on the pipeline.
Photo by Flickr user Stuck in Customs/Creative Commons
Pipeline companies are finding themselves with a new obstacle: defenders of private property rights.
There’s a showdown taking place over a fifty-foot wide swath of farmland in northeast Texas, and the outcome could have a significant effect on the future of the Keystone XL pipeline and how it’s perceived by the public.
As we reported last week, the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, has won an eminent domain claim to route the pipeline through the farmland of Julia Trigg Crawford, who decided not to allow the company to construct the pipeline through her land. While Crawford is appealing that eminent domain claim, she has also filed a temprorary restraining order against TransCanada that for the time being bars them from entering her property. Now TransCanada is asking for that restraining order to be dissolved.
On Friday, a district judge in Lamar County held a hearing on Crawford’s restraining order. Both sides had their say in a session that started at nine and didn’t end until three in the afternoon. “It was a crazy, crazy wild day,” Crawford says. The company says Crawford and her attorneys “violated state law by seeking a temporary restraining order without our knowledge,” according to a statement by the company. The judge will make a ruling on whether or not to dissolve the temprorary restraining order sometime this week.
While much of the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has come from environmental corners, the case of the pipeline versus the farmer illustrates a new obstacle for the company: defenders of private property rights. Continue Reading →
Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece Theatre television show from across the pond, has captured the hearts and fashion sense of many Americans this year. People have fallen in love with the period piece for its drama, romance and history, but the show may also provide a glimpse into our energy future and provide lessons for how to best adapt to major innovations in energy and technology.
In case you’re one of the few people left on earth who haven’t fallen in love with the show, Downton Abbey tells the story of a rich family that lives in a castle (the “Abbey” of the title) during World War I. While dealing with the intricacies and politics of inheritance, servile romance and afternoon tea, the characters of the show also have to adapt to a time of rapid innovation.
Telephones, automobiles and electricity all make their way into the world of Downton Abbey during the show, and the at times feeble response of the characters to these new technologies is part of its charm. “First electricity, now telephones,” Violet the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the matriarch of the family says in the first season. “Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an HG Wells novel. But the young are all so calm about change, aren’t they?”
But while Downton Abbey is an affectionate look at the past, the show may actually tell us something about the future of electricity and the best way to adapt to it. Continue Reading →
Photo by Flickr user tarsandsaction/Creative Commons
Environmental groups have been vocal opponents of the pipeline.
This article was reported and researched by David Barer, an intern at StateImpact Texas.
The 1,700-mile long Keystone XL Pipeline would connect the Alberta oil sand fields in Canada to refineries in Texas. The project has become a hotly-contested issue between environmentalists and big-oil companies. Democrats and Republicans have also wrangled over the pipeline due to the upcoming presidential election.
The Texas leg of the Keystone pipeline would run south from Cushing Oklahoma through East Texas to refineries near Houston and Port Arthur. The company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, has secured the vast majority of easements and land rights to place their pipeline, but several holdouts refuse to allow the pipeline to be built on the property, which has lead to eminent domain disputes.
We recently spoke with David Weinberg, the Executive Director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, to learn more about the Canadian tar sands, the environmental movement’s stance on the project, and hear Weinberg and his political organization’s thoughts on the issue. (To read an opposing perspective on the pipeline, read our interview with Jim Prescott, project representative for the pipeline.)
Q: What concerns you more: the Keystone XL pipeline or the tar sands?
A: Clearly, building the pipeline enables the production of this resource, so they kind of go together. There are concerns about the processing and the production of tar sands in general. The particular pipeline route which was proposed to the State Department got nixed; that raised its own set of environmental concerns based on where it was located in terms of oil spills over the Ogallala Aquifer in the central United States. So, there’s a very serious concern about production of the resource regardless of where it is sent, where it is processed and where that fuel is used. Continue Reading →
The Keystone XL pipeline would take oil from sand pits in Canada to refineries in Texas.
It’s never out of the news for long. This week the Keystone XL Pipeline, a 1,700-mile, multi-billion dollar project that would connect the Alberta oil sand fields in Canada to refineries in Texas, has come back into the spotlight. There was maneuvering at the Capitol to override the President’s denial of the pipeline. In Texas, a farmer took out a restraining order against the company, TransCanada, after they used eminent domain to route the pipeline through her property.
TransCanada, a Canadian energy company, has been trying to get a permit for the pipeline for over three years. They’ve encountered environmental concerns in Nebraska and political wrangling at the highest levels of government. The project is currently delayed, but TransCanada says it will soon reapply for the permit it needs to build across the U.S.-Canada border.
We sat down recently to speak with Jim Prescott, a project representative for TransCanada, about the company’s views on the pipeline. He spoke of the advantages the company sees of building Keystone XL, the pipeline’s difficult permitting process and the inner workings of oil and gas transportation in America. (To read an opposing perspective on the pipeline, read our interview with David Weinberg of the Texas League of Conservation Voters.)
Q: Why is there a need to transport all these tar sand oils to America? Why can’t this oil just be refined up in Canada?
A: Well, they don’t have the refinery capacity up there, for one thing. The largest concentration of refineries in the world is from Corpus Christi, Texas to the Mississippi River along the Gulf Coast through Texas and Louisiana. So, this is where the demand is. This is where the refinery production capabilities exist.
Q: There are already a lot of pipelines crisscrossing the U.S. It’s not unusual to have new oil or natural gas pipelines from state to state. Did it surprise you to see how big of a national issue this has become?
A: I don’t know if surprise is the right way to say it.
The skeleton of a fish sits on the dry shores of Lake Buchanan, which is nearing historically low levels.
Another week, another update from the National Drought Monitor. While there hasn’t been much movement this week, there are some signs of continued improvement: Three percent of the state moved out of the highest level of drought, “exceptional,” meaning now only twenty percent of Texas is in “exceptional” drought. That’s the lowest level since last April, and a far ways from the peak of 88 percent of the state in “exceptional” drought in early October.
Above-average rains in much of the state have brought real progress, particularly for Texans in urban areas. Dallas/Fort Worth has become drought-free, while much of Harris County (and Houston) and all of El Paso are now in the lightest stage of drought, the “moderate” level. Austin and San Antonio have moved from the second level of drought, “severe,” from levels of “extreme” and “exceptional” before that.
Some more details from the drought monitor give both good and bad news: Continue Reading →
Where the Keystone XL pipeline would go through Texas.
Tomorrow morning in Paris, Texas, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline is facing a farmer in court.
At issue? As we reported earlier this week, the company, TransCanada, wants to route the pipeline through the farmer’s land. The farmer, Julia Trigg Crawford, refused.
Crawford’s farm is in Lamar County northeast of Dallas. She says she looked into some environmental issues with the pipeline and how it would go through her farm and decided she wasn’t on board. “One of my first concerns was, to go the path they had planned, they had to horizontally drill under the creek that I have water rights to,” Crawford told StateImpact Texas. “So, I didn’t exactly want this sludge being pumped underneath the creek.” Crawford also said that if the pipeline was buried underneath her property it could create a “vegetative dead zone” for her crops, because the temperature of the line can get up to 140 degrees, she said.
After repeatedly refusing to sign an agreement with TransCanada, the company filed for eminent domain last fall, and won the right to route the pipeline through Crawford’s farm. While eminent domain is typically used for public projects, in this case the private company argued that since the oil passing through the pipeline would ultimately be used by the public, then the pipeline itself was a public “common carrier” and not a private pipeline, even though it’s privately owned and operated.
As a last-ditch effort, Crawford filed and won a temporary restraining order in Lamar County preventing the company from going on her land earlier this week. TransCanada wasted no time in asking for that restraining order to be dissolved, and tomorrow morning both the company and Crawford will be in court to argue their case. We’ll be reporting more on this story tomorrow.
Electric vehicles, whether they be plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt, or completely electric, combustion-free cars like the Nissan Leaf, are often heralded for their low emissions and high mileage.
While these plug-in vehicles have seen lower-than-projected sales since their debut in late 2010, there’s the possibility that we’re still in the “early adopter” phase. As oil prices go up (and plug-in car prices come down) we’ll likely see more and more of them on the road and at the charging station.
Which is a cause for concern. All of those cars have to charge their batteries somewhere, and that means more energy demand on an already-strained electric grid in Texas. More energy could come from coal or gas power plants, which means though the cars are emitting less, they are still relying on fossil fuel energy to run (and causing emissions in the process).
How can the grid deal with this? Karl Rábago, the Vice President for Distributed Energy Services at Austin Energy, addressed the issue yesterday at the 2012 Wind, Solar and Storage conference at the University of Texas School of Law. Rábago is a plug-in owner himself after purchasing a Chevy Volt in November. “I’ve used 8 gallons of gas since then,” he says.
Austin Energy predicts that by 2020, there’ll be between 10,000-35,000 new plug-in vehicles in Austin. To charge all those batteries, Austin Energy wants to use “clean, renewable and efficient energy.” But there are some difficulties with that goal. Continue Reading →
Photo by Flickr user GrungeTextures/Creative Commons
The Texas drought has killed an estimated 5.6 million urban trees and 500 million forest trees, roughly 10 percent of the trees in Texas.
A new study from the Texas Forest Service has bad news about the trees in your neighborhood. They estimate that 5.6 million trees in the urban areas of Texas – those leafy providers of shade around your home and dotting your parks – are now dead. This number could be up to ten percent of the urban trees in Texas. (A separate study late last year of forest trees in non-urban areas said that 500 million of those could be dead due to the drought.)
The Forest Service sent out “urban foresters” to conduct the study last month. Foresters looked at satellite photos from before and during the drought, “counting both live and dead trees in randomly selected plots on both public and private land,” according to the study. “All cities and towns in Texas were included in the study with the exception of the Trans Pecos region, where tree mortality was determined to be a result of a February 2011 cold snap; not the drought.”
“This estimate is preliminary because trees are continuing to die from the drought,” says Pete Smith, Texas Forest Service staff forester and lead researcher, in a release accompanying the study. “This means we may be significantly undercounting the number of trees that ultimately will succumb to the drought. That number may not be known until the end of 2012, if ever.”
And removing the dead trees (a safety hazard) will be costly, with an estimate of $560 million. The Forest Service also says the lost economic benefit of the trees (in the form of energy lost because the trees are no longer cooling homes, cleaning air and water, and keeping property values higher) is $280 million a year.
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