Texas likes to be “business friendly” and as the state legislature considers bills to limit environmental regulation to keep it that way, some economists warn of the longer term consequences.
Dave Fehling / StateImpact Texas
Cattle ranch borders petrochemical plant in Calhoun County
“It’s not as simple as saying yeah, it’s a negative for everybody and everybody is going to move out of the state if we have more stringent regulation,” said Daniel Millimet, an environmental economist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The idea that too much regulation can scare off business has been a main thrust of some of the state’s environmental regulators like David Porter, one of the three elected leaders of the Texas Railroad Commission. Speaking last October at oil and gas drillers conference in San Antonio, Porter contended that should Texas succumb to the stricter pollution regulation of the federal government, disaster would follow for the state’s booming drilling industry. Continue Reading →
Signs warn that fish may be contaminated at Superfund site along San Jacinto River
Some county governments have found that when it comes to suing corporations over polluted property, hiring a private law firm on a contingency fee basis is the way to go.
But against the backdrop of a multi-billion dollar dioxin case in Harris County, there’s an effort to outlaw those arrangements in pollution lawsuits.
(UPDATE: A Texas Appeals Court on July 25 ruled in favor of Harris County, denying a temporary injunction sought by the companies Harris County was suing using contingency lawyers) The House Committee on Environmental Regulation has scheduled a hearing today on a bill that would ban counties from using private firms, HB 3119. (UPDATE: On April 16, the committee delayed consideration of the bill by “leaving it pending”)
The bill has the support of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute that compiled a report on what it calls the “dubious practice of employing private lawyers on a contingency basis.” Continue Reading →
Pool of of oily wastewater officials say is from illegal dumping in Ector County
In the booming Permian Basin of West Texas, Ector County is one of the leaders in oil production. But some of the crude is ending up on roads and highways, as haulers of drilling wastewater break the law to increase profits by dumping the slimy mixture from tanker trucks, sometimes as the trucks are moving.
In response, the county is developing ways to catch and prosecute the polluters.
“What we were seeing was a huge increase in illegal dumping,” said Susan Redford, the Ector County Judge in Odessa.
“A lot of companies that were drilling and providing related services were looking for quick, cheap and easy ways to dispose of the fluids they were generating,” Redford told StateImpact Texas. Continue Reading →
The Texas Environmental Enforcement Task Force affidavit for a warrant to search the Houston office of the Railroad Commission in 2010
As the legislature considers making changes to the Railroad Commission of Texas in the future, a search warrant is now shedding light on how the Railroad Commission interacted with criminal investigators in the past.
An affidavit for the warrant, obtained by StateImpact, shows that during a 2010 investigation of a state-regulated site used for disposing drilling fluids, the Texas Environmental Enforcement Task Force said it wanted to seize documents it said were being withheld; withheld not by the company that ran the disposal site, but by the Railroad Commission that was supposed to be regulating it.
Students from small towns in Texas are filling up community college classes that have titles like “Drilling” and “Well Completions.”
Dave Fehling / StateImpact
At Coastal Bend College, oil & gas instructor Roy Coley with students Kollin Harless and Nicole Burks
At Coastal Bend College in Beeville in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale, just 46 students enrolled for petroleum training courses in 2008. Last year, there were 1,086. Many of the students are lured by promises of salaries that used to be found mostly in bigger cities.
“There’s so many more opportunities for jobs now in all these little small towns around here,” said Kollin Harless who’s from Three Rivers, population 1,834. He’s studying “mud engineering” to learn how to ensure that drilling fluid—or mud as it’s called—is properly formulated and injected at a drilling site. He expects an annual starting salary in the neighborhood of $60,000.
One of his classmates, Nicole Burks, started college with an entirely different career goal.
Ron Curry at a Superfund site with Harris County officials
Ron Curry is the EPA’s new administrator for Region 6, overseeing enforcement of federal pollution laws in New Mexico (where he once headed that state’s environment department), Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and in Texas.
Texas, where the state has gone to court to stop the EPA from enforcing pollution laws. Texas is also where the previous EPA regional administrator, Al Armendariz, had a rocky relationship with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Armendariz left last year to join the Sierra Club after a firestorm erupted when he was heard on a video using the word “crucify” as he explained how tough his staff could be on the worst polluters.
The Texas Attorney General says the TCEQ, the state's environmental regulator, was not responsible for killing 23 rare whooping cranes.
UPDATE: Late Friday afternoon State Attorney General Abbot’s request to stay the ruling on TCEQ water management was denied, according to The Aransas Project, the plaintiffs in the case.
However, the language of Judge Jack’s original order (the one the state was trying to stay) was amended to allow the TCEQ to approve water permits from the Guadalupe and San Antonio River basins which are “necessary to protect the public’s health and safety.”
You can find the document denying the stay and amending the original order here.
Earlier this week, a federal judge found the state’s environmental agency guilty of violating the Endangered Species Act. The ruling, which could have implications for the water management across the state, said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)Â was responsible for the deaths of 23 rare Whooping Cranes. It prohibited the TCEQ from issuing new water use permits for the Guadalupe and San Antonio River unless the Agency could prove that the cranes would not be impacted.
Today, the Texas Attorney General said the state would appeal that ruling, and sought an emergency stay from the federal district court while the state plans that appeal.
When supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline said it would bring jobs to Texas, they probably weren’t talking about jobs for lawyers.
That’s just kind of how it worked out.
As property owners challenge the company’s use of eminent domain, the project to bring crude from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf sparked litigation all down the line. One of those property owners is Julia Trigg Crawford. She’s a farmer from North Texas who says it was too easy for the company to take her land.
Photo by Terrence Henry
Julia Trigg Crawford has been in an extended legal battle with the TransCanada pipeline company.
“The way TransCanada got to that stage is, they went to the Railroad Commission [which regulates drilling and pipelines in the state], they got the T4 form,” Crawford told StateImpact Texas, “and when they got to the box that asked if you’re a common carrier or a private carrier they checked the common carrier box.”
To be a “common carrier” means that the pipeline can be hired out by whatever entity can afford to use it, kind of like a toll road. To claim common carrier status gives the company the right to take land under state law. But in 2011, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that pipeline builders need to do more than check a box to get that power. Now, three bills at the state capital aim to overhaul the system.
Whooping Cranes return to Aransas for Winter 2009.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is tasked with safeguarding the state’s natural resources, but this week a federal judge found the Agency responsible for the deaths of 23 rare whooping cranes.
The TCEQ’s management of water flows into the Guadalupe River lead to the deaths by not allowing enough freshwater into the river, raising its levels of salinity, according to U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack.
Judge Jack found that the Agency’s actions are a violation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Her order mandates that the TCEQ create a habitat conservation plan for the cranes and bars the state from issuing any new water permits on the rivers without federal oversight.
But the ruling may influence water management in Texas well beyond the Guadalupe River. Continue Reading →
A group of retirees from NASA who once put a man on the moon and call their group The Right Climate Stuff “shouldn’t be taken seriously” according to an article in The Guardian, a British newspaper.
Dave Fehling / StateImpact
Dr. Harold Doiron worked on NASA's Apollo project
One of the most vocal of the bunch, Harold Doiron, was taunted at a debate held at the National Press Club in Washington DC this past January.
“Do you believe in global warming? Do you believe there’s global warming,” asked moderator Blanquita Cullum. This came after other panelists assured the audience that virtually all peer-reviewed scientific studies support that humans cause climate change and that to argue otherwise “is like debating whether cigarettes cause cancer.” Continue Reading →
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