Photo courtesy of DiveOfficer: www.flickr.com/photos/diveofficer/
If some climate change models are correct, vampire bats might some day move in to Texas.
Halloween is more than a month away, but weāre already hearing about vampires.
Last week, reports that vampire bats bit a man in Central Texas sent shivers down more than a few spines. The attack, as first reported by KSAT in San Antonio, allegedly took place during a hunting trip in Johnson City. The man said he and his friends were set upon in their sleep by the creatures, that bite their prey and then lick the blood from the wounds.
And what reporter can resist a good vampire bat story?
I know I canāt.
So, smelling blood, I started making some phone calls. The man who said he was bitten did not return requests for comment, but I did hear from Ron Van Den Bussche.
Heās a professor of zoology at Oklahoma State University, and what he told me punched some holes in the story.
“My first reaction is ā¦ theyāre not vampire bats. Itās a hoax,ā Van Den Bussche said.
Greg Creacy is responsible for prescribed burning in Texas State Parks. He believes the benefits of the program are visible in the aftermath of the Bastrop County Complex Fire. In this photo, you can see forest hit by the Bastrop wildfire. On the left side, an area that had seen prescribed burns before the fire. On the right, an area that did not have prescribed burns before the fire.
Imagine that youāre in a house in the country. Thereās a frantic knock at the door. You open it to find a group of men and women wearing fireproof gear, asking permission to fight a raging wildfire on your property.
“But there’s no fire here,” you respond in confusion.
āYou donāt understand,” they say, “the fire wonāt be here for another few years, but we need to fight it now!ā
The scenario might sound fantastic, but it makes perfect sense to Larry Joe Doherty.
āThat is precisely the whole point of prescribed burning,” he said recently over a lunch of red beans and rice at his Washington County ranch. “You wait around for an emergency and itās too late!” Continue Reading →
Environmental groups filed a petition with the Public Utility Commission of Texas to ramp up solar and geothermal power production in the state.
While state officials and representatives from the energy industry met at a conference to talk about the future of Texas renewables, environmental groups filed a petition charging the state’s Public Utility Commission with dragging its feet on solar and geothermal energy.
At the heart of the petition is a question thatās come up before: whether the PUC is mandated by the state legislature to reach renewable energy ātargets.ā Environmental groups say it is, and by not complying the PUC is depriving Texas of cleaner power. Sierra Club lawyer Casey Roberts says in 2007 lawmakers amended the Renewable Portfolio Standard, so that private and public electric utilities would comply with the renewable goals.
āThatās a clear indication that the legislature believes that thatās something to comply with,” said Casey in a conference call with reporters.
The PUC has not seen it that way. At the conference today, former PUC Commissioner and current Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman fielded a question about the rule. He said the last time it came up before the PUC “we didn’t feel like it was a mandate we felt like it was guidance.”
Giant shovels carve away acres of soil and rock, digging dozens of feet down to reach seams of lignite coal. This is the Big Brown Mine in Freestone County where so far some 14,000 acres have been excavated.
Big Brown was one of the first mines opened in East Texas in the 1970’s to fuel power plants.
Coal haulers run 24/7/365, bringing tons of Texas lignite coal to the Big Brown Power Plant, owned by Luminant. The mine employs 250 people, the plant 150. Luminant said last year that it would have to shut down the mine and lay off workers if new pollution rules affecting coal-burning power plants were enforced.
The EPA says older plants like Big Brown must cut their emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants and that doing so would save hundreds of lives in Texas. But Luminant argued it didn’t have enough time to upgrade the plant with pollution control equipment. Last month, Texas won a ruling blocking the EPA from enforcing the “Cross-State Air Pollution Rule”. Luminant now says it will keep mining here. However, it will shutdown two other generating units for the winter at another plant in Titus County. Like Big Brown, that plant was built in the 1970’s.
Surface mining, also called strip mining, involves massive excavation, creating canyons where meadows once were. Federal and state laws require “reclamation” to replace and recontour the land.
For the most part, Texas lignite coal is used only to fuel power plants located nearby. Because it burns with less intensity, it has less value than compared to higher quality coals from other states including Wyoming. And since more has to be burned, it produces more pollution. Power plants use a mix of out-of-state coal and Texas lignite in order to meet clean air rules.
Located in Limestone and Leon Counties in East Texas, the Limestone power plant is owned by NRG. It was opened in the 1980’s.
The Limestone power plant is fueled by the Jewett Coal Mine nearby which is owned by Colorado-based Westmoreland Coal Company.
Gary Melcher with NRG manages the Limestone plant. He said the plant’s “scrubbers” remove enough of sulfur that had the new, stricter EPA rules taken effect, “We would have been able to meet that and continued operating the plant.”
According to the city of Fairfield in Freestone County, coal mines and power plants are three out of the area’s four biggest employers (number two is a state prison).
Anthony’s Restaurant in Jewett draws a lunch crowd from the mine and power plant.
If coal becomes less competitive compared to natural gas or even wind and production drops or stops, the Fairfield school district could lose millions in taxes it currently receives from the Big Brown mine.
There are 15 coal mines in East and Central Texas, five in South Texas.
In East Texas, where unemployment rates in some counties are among the highest in the state, coal mining ranks as one of the biggest employers.
In the war between Austin and Washington over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to put stricter limits on air pollution, some people in communties like Fairfield and Jewett worry what will happen if coal production drops…or stops.
Hundreds of people turned out at a recent public hearing in Round Rock to discuss the listing of four Central Texas Salamanders as Endangered Species.
When it comes to the battle over what qualifies as an endangered species, the script practically writes itself. The government proposes adding new animals to the list; business interests and land owners fight the proposal, fearing the financial impact; environmentalists rally around the critters, arguing for sustainability.
These days, it’s Central Texas’ turn. The creatures in question? Four tiny salamanders.
On a recent evening in the town of Round Rock in Williamson County, hundreds of people packed into a nondescript convention center just off the interstate to talk amphibians. Round Rock is a suburban Austin community, the second-fastest growing metro region in the country, and most of the people at the public hearing opposed listing the creatures.
When Jed Clampett was “shootin’ at some food and up through the ground came a bubblin’ crude,” TV viewers might have thought it was funny. But as it turns out, some of crude oil pipelines in use today in the United States were built about the same time The Beverly Hillbillieshit the air on CBS in 1962. And when the crude comes bubblin’ up from pipelines now? It’s not so funny.
“In 2010, several systems that remain in service today already exceeded 50 years in age, with no major plans to retire existing infrastructure based on … age alone,” said a panel of pipeline executives in “Crude Oil Infrastructure“, a report to the National Petroleum Council. The panel warned that while age doesn’t always matter, “integrity issues,” including corrosion and failure of welded seams, “will become more common due to a number of age-related issues.”
State officials, conservationists, and representatives from donor groups marked the start of a tree replanting campaign by watering seedlings in Bastrop State Park.
Well-wishers and reporters sweated under the late summer sun recently in Bastrop State Park, as officials announced the start of a tree planting campaign for a forest that was 95 percent destroyed by fire last year.
Texas Parks and Wildlife hopes to raise millions of dollars to fund a vast tree replanting effort. For many, that campaign marks a new beginning in the life of the park.
āYou know the good thing about today and what this kind of symbolizes is that weāre through looking back. Weāre looking forward. And thatās what planting a pine seedling is all about,ā Texas Forest Service Director Tom Boggus told the crowd.
But as the speakers gathered for a photo-op to water the seedlings, the past wasnāt really that far behind. The fact that the seedlings were there at allcame down to a very close call about a year ago, when the Forest Service had almost thrown away all the seeds that are now so essential to the parkās recovery. Continue Reading →
Big industrial plants like these near homes in Houston don't have to pay into fund, homeowners do
It’s one of those charges on your electric bill that can be a blur of little figures. It’s called theĀ Energy Efficiency Cost Recovery FactorĀ and on a recent bill of a Houston customer it added $1.02 to the total. (It applies in “competitive” markets like Houston and Dallas but not in places with cooperatives or municipally-owned utilities like Austin and San Antonio.)
A buck may not sound like much but when you add up what’s collected annually from millions of Texas residential and commercial customers, it’s serious money. Continue Reading →
Coppell firefighter Lin Whetstine walks through hot spots with a chain saw as on September 7, 2011 in Bastrop, Texas.
No Texan needs reminding of just how bad last year was. For months, Central Texas received only trace amounts of rain. It was the driest– and hottest — summer in the areaās history.
How a ‘Perfect Storm’ Led to the Worst Fires in Texas History/audio]
Chris Barron, Executive Director of the Firemanās and Fire Marshals Association of Texas, remembers that the 2011 wildfire season got off to anĀ ominousĀ start with the Possum Kingdom Lake fire in March.
āAnd Iāll never forget talking to Chief Steve Purdue of the Mineral Wells Fire Department,” Barrons says. “And I asked him what heās up to. And his immediate response was, āIāve got fire all around me, I gotta talk to you later.ā And that kind of set the tone for the rest of the season.ā
The rest of the season was a scorcher. As the summer of 2011 wore on, temperatures broke records and the earth cracked. Vegetation died.
Then in the week before Labor Day, officials began to caution that Central Texas was beginning to look like a powder keg. Continue Reading →
Courtesy The Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce
Attorney General Greg Abbott has filed multiple lawsuits against the EPA
If you search for “EPA” onĀ theĀ website of the Texas Attorney General, you’ll find news releases touting how Greg Abbott is defending Texas against the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“Texas Prevails Against EPA,” says one headline.
“Court Grants Texas Motion to Stay EPA’s Legally Flawed Cross-State Air Pollution Rule,” says another.
And there are lots more about how “Attorney General Greg Abbott Files Challenge” to the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations.
Or to the EPA’s “Tailpipe Rule.”
Or to the EPA’s “Unlawful Attempt to Takeover State Air Permitting.”
Why so many lawsuits against the federal agency that claims it’s just trying to protect us from breathing dirty air?
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