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.
There’s a request for a tax refund currently under consideration by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) from the Valero Energy Corporation, one of the world’s largest oil refiners. Valero is asking for money under a state law that says companies don’t have to pay taxes on equipment (in this case, something called a hydrotreater) that reduces on-site pollution. The request was originally made in 2007, when Valero bought the equipment. The catch? The property tax refunds would come from appraisal districts, which means money taken back from cities and schools that are already struggling.
Much of the attention to the potential dangers of oil and gas exploration, especially in hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”), has focused on the environmental impact it may have. Will it cause earthquakes? Can it pollute the water? Does natural gas have a bigger carbon footprint than coal?
But a new study from the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), a federal agency that investigates chemical accidents, demonstrates another, less obvious danger: teenagers.
Children and young adults frequently socialize at oil sites in rural areas, unaware of the explosion hazards from storage tanks that contain flammable hydrocarbons like crude oil and natural gas condensate. Â The unintentional introduction of an ignition source (such as a match, lighter, cigarette, or static electricity) near tank hatches or vents can trigger an internal tank explosion, often launching the tank into the air and killing or injuring people nearby.
Last year in the rural community of New London, Texas, an M-C Production oil tank exploded when a cigarette was lit by a couple in their mid-twenties. The exploding tank flew 48 feet away, killing the woman and seriously injuring her companion. An investigation by the CSB revealed that “at the time of the explosion the oil site had no fences or hatch locks, nor were the tanks designed to reduce the potential of an internal explosion.” Continue Reading →
This Halloween, the streets of Austin will be invaded by a whole new class of the undead: Oil Zombies.
In a bid to win the hearts and braiiiiiins of Austinites, an environmental group called Texans Against Tar Sands is putting together a gathering of crude-soaked undead to protest the Keystone XL pipeline.
The protest is modeled on a similar one that took place in June in London called the “Tar Sands Undead Walk.”
But not everyone is eager to join the marauding hordes. Continue Reading →
It’s a novel idea — plants, shrubs and flowers, grown on the roof of urban buildings. The plants help cool surrounding air and provide insulation during both hot and cool temperatures.
A few years back, Lance Armstrong was caught. He apologized, admitted the error of his ways, and promised to do better in the future. His offense? Using too much water.
Armstrong had used 330,000 gallons of water in July 2008. He hadn’t even been home at his three acre, 14,475 square foot estate. “I’m a little shocked,” he toldThe New York Times at the time. “There’s no justification for that much water. I need to fix this.”
Well, it’s been several summers since then, this last one being notable for being the hottest and driest on record. And the city is in stage two watering restrictions because of the historic drought.  But it would appear Armstrong has not learned how to conserve. According to data from Austin Water Utility, he used around 1.3 million gallons of water in the last year, putting him among the top ten residential users of water in town.
The record single-year drought afflicting Texas farmers had destroyed crops, decimated yields, and caused prices to rise. The obvious question: How will the farmers survive?
More than 41,000 distressed Texas farmers have received $1.65 billion so far from the national crop insurance program to help compensate for disastrous low yields and other damage caused by the state’s worst drought in history.
Though experts say the amount covers only about a third of the agricultural losses across the state, it may help some survive.
That’s a direct quote from Andy Saenz, spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). He’s referring to an article on rising sea levels by Rice University Professor John Anderson that was supposed to be part of a larger report on the Galveston Bay, “State of the Bay 2010,” by the TCEQ.
So what was wrong with the article in question, according to the TCEQ? You can read it right here, with notable deletions by the commission of phrases such as “due mainly to direct human intervention” and “impacts of global climate change:”
So the TCEQ didn’t like these references to human impact and climate change. Anderson, the Rice Professor, didn’t appreciate their efforts to delete them, so he leaked the article to reporters. This led to the TCEQ removing the article entirely:
Commission spokesman Andy Saenz said Anderson prematurely revealed the draft report to the media without prior approval, and that the commission did not want to include controversial implications about global warming in the report.
Two co-editors of the project, Jim Lester and Lisa Gonzalez, scientists with the Houston Advanced Research Center, a nonprofit research facility contracted for the report, asked the agency to remove their names, fearing their own credibility.
While the Obama administration is under fire for funding solar panel disaster story Solyndra, a Yale professor has another idea: stop funding risky ideas, and start rewarding innovative successes:
Dr. Pogge has proposed the creation of an Ecological Impact Fund, [which] would explicitly link the accessibility of an innovation to its value…
While much green technology today is financed through “push” funding, with governments and grant-making organizations deciding who should receive money, the Ecological Impact Fund would shift the model to market-based “pull” funding that rewards the most successful innovators.
Financed by participating national governments, the fund would rank companies that sign up on the basis of the ecological impact, or benefit, of their innovation. The criteria for judging innovations would be established by a panel of experts from the public and private sectors. Each year, innovators would receive a return based on their ranking, and a product would remain in the reward pool for 10 years.
Rick Perry is busy campaigning across the country, generating headlines for giving Mitt Romney the evil eye, proposing a flat tax, and calling opponent Herman Cain “brother.” But back home in Texas, his state is dry, cracked and at times burning during a drought that “is likely to be one of the ten costliest natural disasters in recent U.S. history.” Richard Parker argues that “Texans need our governor back home. Now:”
“The scale of this drought is nothing short of colossal. It is the worst one-year drought in over 100 years of record-keeping, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the state meteorologist in College Station. A landscape the size of Connecticut has been blackened by fire; the recent Bastrop fires created a plume of smoke so massive it looked like an atomic weapon had been detonated south of Austin. Ranchers drive thirsty cattle to water—only to watch them bloat up and die from drinking too fast. Forced to sell herds early, they are incurring billions in losses and losing the very DNA of their livestock, forcing them to start from scratch next season if they can afford it.
It is the drought’s economic damage, however, that is now beginning to uncoil like a rattlesnake in the tall grass. Officially, direct agricultural losses have amounted to $5 billion. But Ray Perryman, one of the most respected economists in Texas, told me that direct losses will mount to about $7 billion before this year is even over. And the damage by no means stops there; ranchers and farmers are insured for some losses—but often highly leveraged. Perryman estimates that the multiplier effect—farm equipment, seed, fuel, consumer products not purchased as a result—will bring the indirect losses to a staggering $24.5 billion when 2011 draws to a close.”
As the drought shows few signs of abating, some folks in Abilene are turning to less conventional means of finding water, according to the Los Angeles Times:
Powell, 59, learned to dowse for water more than 40 years ago from an old “water witcher” known simply as Mr. Ray. Now Powell runs a dowsing and drilling business, Diversified Water Well Drilling, and carries a notebook filled with the lengthening list of those seeking his services. Demand has skyrocketed in recent months here, about 180 miles west of Dallas, and statewide, fueled by the ongoing drought, heat wave and a boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil drilling that requires lots of water.
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