It has been dubbed “Big Chicken“: the revolution in how poultry is raised and processed. Chicken that once came from small, family farm operations is now produced by networks of huge chicken-growing complexes and sprawling processing plants.
Texas is a major player, ranking sixth in the nation for poultry production. But with the growth has come concern over how concentrating the operations could increase  pollution: the run-off from tons of manure and the millions of gallons of wastewater released by processing plants into streams and creeks.
Oil and Gas royalties paid to the State of Texas average $865 million a year
Energy companies are paying billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties to Texas landowners. But some owners say they’ve been short-changed. The biggest among them: the State of Texas.
“If they don’t pay the royalty, that’s stealing,” Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson told StateImpact Texas.
Patterson said his office is currently negotiating with two big oil companies (which he declined to name) for years of underpayments. Patterson said the the unpaid royalties could total upwards of $100 million.
In the past several years, his office has collected  royalties totaling an average of $865 million dollars annually. The money goes into a fund for public education. Continue Reading →
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples says losses from the drought are "unprecedented."
The drought has taken a toll on every Texan, and some of the worst hit have been the state’s ranchers and farmers. New numbers from the state this week provide some grim statistics on their losses. For some context, StateImpact Texas sat down with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.
A: These monumental numbers have confirmed what agricultural producers have known all along. That when you are as large a state as Texas, and you have a monumental drought event, you’re going to have enormous financial losses. And these losses have been crippling for many operations: 58 percent of the cotton acreage in Texas was abandoned; and we’ve had the largest liquidation of our cattle herd since the great depression. So the $7.62 billion number for agricultural losses, combine that with about $600 million dollars in loss from timber, that’s a big number of over $8 billion in losses. That’s a huge cut in the gross domestic product of the state of Texas.
Q: Have we ever seen anything even approaching this kind of loss before? Continue Reading →
The research team may have found a way to mitigate the effects of oil drilling and shipping noise on sea life.
One of the insidious things about noise pollution is that it is invisible. While the long plume that rose after the Deepwater Horizon explosion is a discernible reminder of how oil can harm the ocean, the sound that explosion made is less tangible.
But recent research shows that the noise caused by human activity, like noise from oil shipping and drilling, is having a negative impact on the marine ecosystem. That’s lead to new research and the possibility of new regulation, all aimed at keeping human activity quieter. Continue Reading →
Texas could be looking at spending possibly hundreds of millions of dollars for road repairs and improvements to cope with the surge in oil and gas drilling.
“We have a task force [that] in the next 90 days is going out and talking to all the partners involved in the activity to see what we can do,” Mark Cross, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Transporation (TxDOT) told StateImpact Texas.
Cross said the state has already made $40 million available for immediate paving of ripped up roads in the areas of heaviest drilling activity: the Barnett Shale in North Texas and the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas. Continue Reading →
Arthur Berman is the head of Labryth Consulting, a Geological consulting firm.
People see a lot of different things when they look at the American natural gas industry. Some see potential environmental dangers. Others see it as a bridge to renewable energy. President Obama envisions more than 600 thousand new jobs from it. But when Arthur Berman looks at the natural gas industry, he sees an iceberg on the open sea.
“We gotta turn to miss that iceburg, but we sure better start turning ten or 15 miles away from it or else we’re gonna hit it,” Berman, a geologist who consults for energy companies, told StateImpact Texas.
So it’s no surprise that lately Berman’s developed a reputation as the “Debbie Downer” of the natural gas industry. For one thing, he doesn’t think the U.S. has as much of it as has been estimated (up to a hundred years). Berman estimates that reserves could only meet demand for the next 23 years.
For another, he believes that all the cheerleading for gas has left U.S. financial markets in danger. Here’s how: the rush to extract has brought down natural gas prices. That’s meant less profit for drillers and gas companies. But some of those companies continue to drill. Berman says you’ve got to leave the shale fields of South Texas, and pay a visit to Wall Street to figure it out.
Standing outside her tidy house in Pasadena, Texas, Patricia Gonzales succinctly sums up her community’s dilemma: “No one is saying we don’t want the jobs. It’s just that we don’t want the pollution coming with it.”
Her home is just two miles from the Houston Ship Channel, which is lined with the biggest concentration of petrochemical plants and oil refineries in the nation.
Gonzales was talking about her latest concern: the Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, it will bring millions of barrels of Canadian crude to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur. But the crude, from the tar sands mined in Alberta, is a heavier, dirtier variety than “sweet crude” from places like West Texas.
“We’re already in the highest level of the polluted [places in] the United States and you bring in more. And you want us to accept that?” Gonzales posed to StateImpact Texas.
Stacy Martin hopes community college course will lead to a better job
If you want to see where the best job prospects are, look who’s putting in the overtime. In Houston, the world’s energy capital where new finds in oil and gas are boosting the economy, it’s workers in manufacturing.
“Right now, the way we’re growing is we’re working people longer hours, the people who have the skills,” said Patrick Jankowski, an economist with the Greater Houston Partnership, a group that promotes the city’s businesses.
Photo Courtesy of boboroshi via flickr creative commons. www.flickr.com/photos/boboroshi/4379040397/
Silencers make hunting easier on the ears, but some control control groups worry about safety.
StateImpact Texas intern Dave Barer contributed research and reporting to this article.
UPDATE: On March 30, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department approved the use of silencers while hunting in Texas. Read about the new rule here.
Without making much noise, a new proposal is headed to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. If it passes, hunters in the state will be able to use a silencer when hunting deer, birds, and even alligators.
The Parks and Wildlife Department says the rule change is primarily about protecting hunters’ hearing and maintaining the tranquility of the outdoors.
“Some neighbors don’t want to hear gunshots, and they’re less likely to hear or be disturbed by gunshots through a firearm with a suppressor or silencer attached,” Scott Vaca, TPWD Assistant Chief of Wildlife Enforcement, told StateImpact Texas.
Just how quiet is a firearm with a silencer or suppressor attached? Well, if you don’t happen to have the equipment at home, you can watch this video to hear the difference a silencer can make. Continue Reading →
The drought has affected Texans across the state. Haskell Simon, a rice farmer in Bay City, could go without water a third year in a row.
The intake from the Lower Colorado River sends water into irrigation canals. This year it will sit idle.
Rice farmers in southeast Texas like Billy Mann may face another year of little to no water from the Highland Lakes for irrigation.
Joe Crane in front of his rice drying and storgage plant in Bay City, Texas.
Many rice mills and drying and storage facilities in Southeast Texas didn’t see much work last year. If they’re cut off again this year, the slow business will continue.
As the clock struck midnight Thursday, many rice farmers across southeast Texas had to face a sobering reality: for the first time in history, they will not have water for their crops. “It saddens me because like I said, my family’s been farming rice since 1905,” says rice farmer Paul Sliva. “This will be the first year we haven’t. There’s no other crop than rice for me. It’s gonna be a weird year. It’s gonna be a sad year for me.”
The lakes that hold that water mean different things to different people. For the people that live on the lakes – and many of whom make their living off of them – they’re a boon to property values and business. But when massive amounts of water were sent downstream to rice farmers last year, more than three times the amount used by all of Austin, in the midst of a record drought no less, the lakes neared historic lows. And that hurt the lake interests, like the construction company owned by Buster Cole. He says rice farmers don’t appreciate the financial impact of their withdrawals from the lake.
“They have no respect for the impact of what’s happening on our Highland Lakes, from economic property values, business owners, all the things involved,” Cole says. “Everybody’s involved in this, and it’s bad.” Continue Reading →
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