When voters go to the polls this year, many of them will have only as much information about the constitutional amendments they’re voting on as is provided on the ballot.
That is to say, not much at all, especially when it comes to the major item on the list, Proposition 6.
The ballot refers to the creation of funds for the State Water Plan, a list of projects to improve water supplies across the state, but makes no mention of the dollar figure that would be involved. It mentions financing for water projects, but not why that financing might be needed, or how the projects will be chosen.
You might have better luck learning about Proposition 6 by asking someone whose job hinges on its passage. Bech Bruun is one of Governor Perry’s newly-minted Water Development Board Members, and if the proposition goes forward, they will decide what water projects to lend money to.
“What Proposition 6 would do is, it would move $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund into a new account, that we will refer to as SWIFT, the State Water Implementation Fund of Texas. And it would allow the Water Development Board to use money from the SWIFT fund for projects in the State’s Water Plan,” he said.
But a vote on the proposition is a vote on even more than that. That’s because of provisions in a law this year that overhauled the Water Development Board.
Domes at fertilizer facility near Bryan where fire in 2009 destroyed a wooden structure
In response to the deadly explosion six months ago in West, Federal agencies will soon be making recommendations to Congress on how to reduce the risk at fertilizer storage facilities. Should igloos be among the ideas?
“There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the West (fertilizer) had been in a dome it would have lost the top, you would have heard a lot of noise, but it would not have damaged the buildings around it,” said David South, president of Monolithic, a company in Italy, Texas that designs concrete dome structures. Continue Reading →
Bruce Bar is a certified floodplain manger and caretaker of his neighborhood dam in Bastrop County.
This is part four of a series looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one here, and part two here, and part three here.
In a peaceful, wooded corner of Bastrop County, Texas sits one of the unluckiest dams in the state. In 2011 the Labor Day Wildfires burned soil and vegetation around Clear Springs Lake and its earthen dam. Then, half a year later, a massive rainstorm hit. Water poured over the structure and wrecked havoc on an already crumbling spillway.
“Our poor little dam has gone between being scorched to being flooded in a matter of six months,” Bruce Bar, a floodplain engineer and the manager of the community’s dam told StateImpact Texas. “So it’s handled about as much as nature can throw at it.”
In his role as manager of the dam, Bar has been looking to raise money for repairs.
“We had a homeowners association meeting and some people got rankled because they didn’t even know that we had a dam, and they had been here for ten or twelve years or so,” he said. “If all of a sudden if they start getting a bill saying they’re due so many thousands of dollars. I think that’s… that could be a problem.”
Aging and lack of maintenance are effecting both private and public dams in the state, but so is an absence of money says Warren Samuelson, the Manager of the Dam Safety Program for the TCEQ.
Crew installing geothermal power generator at well site near Laurel, Mississippi.
There are thousands of oil & gas wells in Texas that tap into the earth’s supply of hot water, some of it a boiling hot 250 F. There are modern, high tech steam engines that could use the water to make electricity. There was a federally-funded experimental power plant that proved the technology could work in Texas.
“They made (the power plant) work, they proved it was successful, and then they dismantled it because they didn’t have funding to keep the project going,” said Maria Richards, a researcher at Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Laboratory. Continue Reading →
Texas has more dams than any other state in the country. This is a map of Texas dams from the USACE.
This is part three of a series looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one here, and part two here.
In 1978 a massive storm hit the West Texas town of Albany. It dumped 23 inches of rain in just eight hours. Waters caused 9 deaths, flooded hundreds of homes, and broke through a local dam. Troy Henderson, who now works on the Brownwood Texas Lake Patrol, says since then he’s followed a simple rule.
“If I were to build a home somewhere, I’d make sure that if it was downstream from a lake that their dam is property maintained,” he told StateImpact Texas, “and the reason I say that is, I lived in Albany in 1978.”
The Federal Government echoes that advice. In the FEMA booklet “Living with Dams,” the agency urges people to “ask questions” about the condition and hazard rating of dams near their homes.
But here in Texas, no one needs to answer those questions.
A photo of a rusted out pipe taken during a TCEQ inspection of a dam. This picture is now used in dam safety workshops presented by TCEQ.
This is part two of a series devoted to looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one hereand part threehere.
In 2008, the Texas State Auditor’s office released the kind of report that keeps public officials awake at night. It found that state regulators were not ensuring the proper maintenance of thousands of dams in Texas. The audit found that state inspectors had never visited hundreds of dams that could cause loss of life if they failed.
The Dam Safety Program with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is in charge of inspecting the state’s dams. Warren Samuelson, the program’s manager, says that his department has added staff and made progress since that audit was issued.
“At the end of 2011 we had all of them… except a handful that we couldn’t get into. We were able to look at all of these high and significant hazard dams,” Samuelson told StateImpact Texas.
This picture of a dam that over-topped is used in dam safety workshops presented by the TCEQ.
This is part one of a StateImpact Texas series devoted to looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it.Â
Of the 1,880 dams inspected by the TCEQ since 2008, 245 were found to be in bad condition, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Around 2,000 of the state’s dams were built with federal help in the wake of the great drought of the 1950s. Almost all of those are now past or nearing their projected 50-year lifespan, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Statistics like these don’t come as a surprise to the people who work with dams in the state of Texas.
“We’ve traveled and looked at different dams just to make sure that we do things right. And there’s a lot of dams that we did come across that would scare me to live downstream from them,” Troy Henderson, Chief of Lake Patrol for the Brownwood Water Improvement District, told StateImpact Texas this summer.
Vented methane gas burns at processing facility in DeWitt County
When the Environmental Defense Fund and researchers from the University of Texas wanted to find out just how much methane gas was coming from natural gas production sites, they ended up getting “unprecedented” access. The researchers had approached nine, big oil & gas exploration companies, gaining permission to do testing on 190 production sites nationwide.
“It definitely took some conversations with these companies to build a comfort and a trust level that this wasn’t a ‘gotcha’ exercise but rather an exercise to improve the science,” said Drew Nelson, manager of the Environmental Defense Fund ‘s climate and energy program. Continue Reading →
Hurricane Ike in 2008 buckled this petroleum storage tank south of Beaumont
Research engineers say they’re finding that giant storage tanks for petrochemicals and petroleum are vulnerable to damage from tropical storms despite the tanks’ massive size and steel construction. The researchers found multiple cases of flood waters and high winds causing the tanks to float, buckle and rupture.
What the scientists say they didn’t find were regulations to minimize the risk in areas where “storm surge” waters are a threat.
“Overall we don’t see a wealth of any mandated provisions for considering surge or wave loads or external pressures from hurricane events,” said Jamie Padgett speaking at conference held recently in Houston by Rice University’s hurricane research center. Continue Reading →
Downtown Odessa Texas, despite having a roaring hot economy, some storefronts remain empty in the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The Midland-Odessa region in West Texas has the highest GDP growth in the country, the lowest unemployment in Texas. This is oil country, and oil is one of the most profitable products in the world. But if you ask someone what it’s like to live there, don’t be surprised to hear answer like this:
“It’s terrible.”
During a recent visit I heard that sentiment from oilfield hands and office workers alike. One roughneck I ran into at an Odessa doughnut shop agreed to share his opinions anonymously. (He didn’t want his name included in this story because his company has a policy against talking to reporters).
“Everything’s overpriced, the food is overpriced, living is overpriced,” he said.
And that was just the start. His other complaints: housing is impossible to find, rents are high, traffic is terrible, crime is bad and there’s nothing to do.
“Everybody’s just trying to make as much as they can, wait for this boom to be over and get out,” he said.
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