Where politics, government and energy intersect.
Karl Dreher, the general manager for the Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA), has been placed on paid administrative leave. An EAA spokesperson confirmed the news today to StateImpact Texas, which was first reported in the San Antonio Express-News. The Authority manages the groundwater district of the Edwards Aquifer, which includes San Antonio and many of the […]
More than thirty years after Congress created the federal Superfund site program, there’s still a debate over how best to deal with polluters.
Did you know that America’s number one export is … garbage? Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of twelve books (and a former Austinite), examines this and other disquieting facts about American trash culture—literal trash culture, not the other kind—in his new book, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash. Americans, while making up only five […]
The Texas Panhandle’s corn crops are greener now than they have been in many months. Recent rainfall has given this season’s crops a new lease on life. But, corn crops thirty years from now might not be so lucky. The rapid depletion of the Panhandle’s groundwater supplies could dramatically alter the character of agriculture in […]
With warnings piling up that Texas could face power blackouts this summer, a consulting group gave its support to the Texas Public Utility Commission’s (PUC) proposal to dramatically increase the cap on the wholesale price of electricity during critical, high demand times. The idea is to make Texas a more profitable electricity market so investors […]
UPDATED An official with the EPA has told StateImpact Texas that the route of the pipeline has changed since the EPA letter was sent in November. Under the new route the EPA will not be involved in the review. EARLIER The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter late last year raising concerns that the […]
It would be a stretch to say it was a nail-biter, but two races for the Railroad Commission are headed for a runoff on July 31. To take a primary in Texas, you must get fifty percent plus one vote, and in the Republican Primary races for two seats on the Railroad Commission, no candidate […]
Earlier this week we posted a video and audio report from Andy Uhler of KUT News (one of the public radio stations in the StateImpact Texas project) about a small community ten miles outside of Austin that lives without running water, the colonia of Las Lomitas. In the second and third part of the series, […]
How renewed opposition by rice farmers could throw a compromise deal on water management in the Lower Colorado back into question.
While some Texas towns ran dry during the drought, or came close to doing so, one community has been living without water regardless of how much rain falls in the state. In a rural subdivision less than ten miles outside of Austin, some thirty families live without running water. Most of them are low-income and […]
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