Where politics, government and energy intersect.
We won’t know for sure until midnight on Thursday, but there may not be enough water for rice farmers in southeast Texas this year.
In a unanimous vote this morning, the Railroad Commission of Texas elected a new chairman, commissioner Barry Smitherman. He’s been a member of the commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state, since July 2011, when he was first appointed by Governor Rick Perry. Smitherman will run for re-election to the commission this year. Smitherman […]
If you’re a rice farmer in southeast Texas, chances are you’re taking a close look at the level of the Highland Lakes a few hundred miles away.
Here are a couple of sobering facts: Texas has a booming population, and a strained electrical grid. So why aren’t new power plants being built?
Reaction came fast and furious to Friday’s announcement that the Texas Supreme Court had reached a decision in The Edwards Aquifer Authority V. Burrell Day and Joel McDaniel. The case has far-reaching implications for how local water authorities can regulate the amount of groundwater a private property owner pulls from their land. It’s a decision […]
The Texas Supreme Court has reached a ruling in a case that will have widesweeping implications for the way groundwater is regulated across the state. The Edwards Aquifer Authority and the State of Texas, V Burrell Day and Joel McDaniel, centered on whether property owners could be compensated if a water authority limited the amount […]
Yana Skorobogatov, an intern at StateImpact Texas, researched and reported this article. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) announced today that its executive director, Mark Vickery, will retire from the agency this May. Vickery has spent the past twenty five years working in virtually every area of the TCEQ, including industrial and hazardous waste […]
In what they’re calling the “most decisive issue” they’ve ever come across, the Lower Colorado River Authority voted today in favor of a new water plan that will change how much water goes from the Highland Lakes to customers downstream. The water plan was created over the last 18 months by a group with representatives from […]
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. […]
The next couple days will be busy ones at the headquarters of the Lower Colorado River Authority. The agency that controls the water flowing from the Highland Lakes to the Gulf Coast is set to approve a new Water Management Plan on Tuesday. But before it makes a final decision, it will hear from the […]
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives.
Learn More »