Where politics, government and energy intersect.
Barry Smitherman, the chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission which regulates oil and gas drilling, said there has been “much interest” by the commission’s staff since he made his proposal earlier this month to offer training for concealed handgun licenses. But a union organizer said state employees of other agencies have shown little enthusiasm in […]
From the Texas Tribune: The Railroad Commission of Texas regulates one of the most advanced industries in the world — oil and gas drilling. Yet the commission’s software systems, many of its rules and even its name are from another era. As the 122-year-old agency confronts a drilling boom that is altering the state and […]
At a Texas Tribune event this morning in Austin, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst talked with Tribune Editor-in-Chief Evan Smith about a whole host of issues facing the state, such as public education. And of course, they also talked about water. On Wednesday, State Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) announced his support of a plan to […]
The Texas State Water Plan has been described as a $53 billion dollar wish list. It’s full of local projects, proposed by regional water districts. They are meant to be enough to secure water for Texas for 50 years. But those projects remain largely unprioritized and unfunded. Now state legislators say they are serious about […]
Updated with statements from Chase Power and the Environmental Integrity Project. After losing its air permit last summer, the Las Brisas coal power plant proposed for Corpus Christi has been suspended. The news was first reported in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. “Chase Power … has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and […]
Please join us in Austin tonight, January 28th, for a panel examining water issues in Texas featuring several state legislators.
While some Texans have employed water-efficient landscaping as a way of dealing with the ongoing drought, a large group is often left out: those who live in homes belonging to Home Owners Associations, or HOAs. HOAs can have strict restrictions on what kind of grass a homeowner can plant for a lawn (sometimes, the thirsty […]
With water on the minds behind the Texas legislature, Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, the chairman of the House National Resources Committee, sat down last week to talk with the Texas Tribune about what lawmakers can do to secure new water supplies for a growing state. Ritter recently filed a fill that would take $2 billion from […]
The Fracking boom in the Barnett Shale has brought earthquakes to Dallas-Fort Worth.
For the rice farmers of Southeast Texas, 2012 was a rough year. For the first time in history, they were cut off from water because there wasn’t enough in the main reservoirs of the Lower Colorado River to supply them. In 2013, they face the same situation: if there isn’t enough water in the Highland […]
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