“In Texas, I don’t think there’s anybody else doing quite what we’re doing,” says research scientist Kevin Schug.
Dave Fehling / StateImpact
Becky Burke's home in Denton County has a water well in her side yard and a gas well in the front yard
What Schug is doing can be found in a two big kitchen refrigerators in a lab on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington. The fridges are crammed with hundreds of plastic bottles containing samples from private water wells located mostly in North Texas, but some of them in West Texas, too.
The project hopes to determine if drilling for oil and gas and burying chemical waste generated by the work is contaminating groundwater. The project is not sponsored by Texas environmental regulators nor the oil and gas industry but rather by UT Arlington. UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology is also involved.
The beef checkoff vote is about more than just a one dollar tax.
Forget the governor’s race. All across Texas people are voting over beef.
Friday is the final day for ranchers and others who deal in cattle to vote on implementing a Texas beef checkoff, a tax charged each time a cow is sold. There’s already a national beef checkoff that levies a one dollar assessment on the seller per cow.
The vote today is on a proposal to create a Texas checkoff, also for a dollar. If the proposal passes, most ranchers in the state will pay a two-dollar tax for each head of cattle they sell.
The government doesn’t collect this tax. The money goes to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board which then gives some of it to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. That industry group uses it to fund beef-related research and to promote beef. The same group also lobbies Washington on behalf of the beef industry. Supporters of the checkoff argue that the tax has raised the price of beef over the years by creating demand.
“Every time the price of beef goes up, it helps me,” says Texas Rancher Curtis Younts Jr., who supports the checkoff.
But the Texas vote has become about more than a one-dollar tax. Many are viewing it as a referendum on the way beef is taxed and promoted in Texas and the US.
Oil field workers wear these safety alert devices that detect hydrogen sulfide gas
Hydrogen sulfide — a gas that smells like rotten eggs — can be insidious in its lethality. Its odor will be unmistakeable to its victim. But the gas can quickly numb the sense of smell, leading to the belief that the threat has passed. Unconsciousness and death can follow.
“Unfortunately, if you come in contact with hydrogen sulfide there are not a lot of second chances,” said Sheldon McKee, director of business development at AMGAS, a Canadian company that makes equipment to remove hydrogen sulfide in the oilfields, where it can be a deadly risk for workers.
AMGAS opened an office last year in San Antonio to serve what the company sees as a growing need. Drilling for oil has surged just south of San Antonio in a swath of rural counties that comprise the Eagle Ford Shale. It’s an area known for what’s called “sour gas:” natural gas and crude oil with high amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Sour gas can also be found in parts of West Texas and in East Texas.
Construction on the community’s new well system and treatment facility began only about a month ago.
Most Spicewood Beach residents came here to retire with modest savings. Now they feel stuck in depreciated homes with a strained water supply.
In recent months, the community has received some winter rain. Come summertime though, resident Steve Duich says his front lawn will look “like a parking lot.”
An empty above-ground pool sits in Duich’s front yard. Under Stage 4 emergency water restrictions, LCRA bans outdoor watering and urges for only essential water use.
LCRA trucks water into this neighborhood five to six times a day. This began in early 2012 as a temporary solution.
Kim Clifton, a cashier, says her business has managed to keep busy as the only general store in Spicewood Beach. Other businesses can’t stay afloat in this small, tourist driven economy.
Boat docks that once drifted along the shores of Lake Travis now rest on a dry bed of grass and rocks..
Along Lake Travis’ rocky shoreline, plant life is sparse.
Duich points high above the stream of Lake Travis to show where the water have dropped from in recent years.
Tony Castillo, like many residents here, has resigned himself to a constantly unstable water supply.
Behind the counter of a general store just off Highway 71, Kim Clifton, the cashier, shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head when asked about the lingering drought. “We just need more rain,” she says. She rolls her head back to let out an exasperated laugh, “Bring the rain! Bring it!”
It’s something you hear all the time these days across Texas, but chances are you’ll hear it the most in Spicewood Beach, Texas, a Lake Travis community about 40 miles from Austin. Just a little over two years ago, it made headlines as the first community in Texas to run out of water during the current drought.
In early 2012, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which owns and manages the community’s water system, announced that groundwater levels were falling, leaving its well useless.
Those levels got so low LCRA began trucking in water five to six times a day as a temporary solution. Each load costs LCRA about 200 dollars.
Now, over two years later, LCRA plans to put the finishing touches on a new well system costing over a million dollars. The system was supposed to be completed last summer, but construction began just last month.
With oil and gas drilling booming, so are the number of wells used for wastewater, growing by about a thousand a year since 2009. There are now over 35,000 disposal and injection wells in Texas according to the Railroad Commission.
The wells are used to get rid of the millions of gallons of chemically-tainted wastewater and produced water from oil & gas drilling. The waste is pumped deep underground, far below the aquifers holding water used by cities and ranches.
Mottled ducks in pond at Brazoria National WIldlife Refuge in Brazoria County
It can be tough being a duck these days in Texas. Next door in Louisiana, they’ve got cable TV’s big reality hit, Duck Dynasty. But in Texas, there’s less a dynasty and more of a dilemma, at least for one breed called the Mottled Duck.
“If you look at the composite of things they all suggest that in Texas, mottled ducks are declining,” said Bart Ballard. “Louisiana seems to be stable.”
Ballard is a scientist at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M-Kingsville. He said estimating duck populations can be tricky. But according to a 2009 report for the U.S. Geological Survey, an analysis off data from 2005-2009 suggested “a rapidly declining mottled duck population” in Texas.
Ryan Sitton and Wayne Christian are facing off to become the GOP nominee for Railroad Commissioner.
Some political campaigns, like the race for governor or president, energize everyday people, grab the media spotlight, and spark heated public debate. Then there are races like the Republican primary runoff election for Texas Railroad Commissioner.
It’s a down-ballot race that many Texans know nothing about (the commission has nothing to do with railroads, rather it regulates Texas oil and gas industries). But that hasn’t stopped the race from getting increasingly negative as the primary runoff on May 27th approaches.
In fact, the lack of voter enthusiasm is likely part of what’s driving the negativity.
“You’ll see a big difference at the top of the ballot for people who vote in the Lieutenant Governor’s Race on the Republican side, who don’t vote when it gets down to this race,” says Ross Ramsey, co-founder and Executive Editor of the Texas Tribune.
Traffic accidents have surged along with drilling in Texas counties.
In what were some of the poorer counties in Texas, a surge in oil & gas drilling has set local economies on fire. But at the same time, officials have made dire pleas for help, saying the drilling boom is destroying roads and leading to deadly crashes.
The Associated Press found that while traffic deaths are down statewide in Texas, they’re up 18 percent in counties with lots of drilling.
“Unfortunately, one of the biggest growing pains and consequences of all this activity has been the increased number of fatalities that have taken place in these areas. We need to work on these roads, make them wider, make them safer,” said State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio), who represents some of the most oil-rich counties.
Jackie Young at San Jacinto River Superfund site tells why local lawsuits are important in our Radio Story
After being the target of intense lobbying that drew criticism in last year’s Texas legislature, lawmakers will again hear why big business wants restrictions on local governments that go after polluters in court. The House Judiciary Committee will take up the issue at a hearing May 16th.
Bills to curtail pollution lawsuits by local governments died in the last legislative session.
“I wasn’t surprised to see it still out there. There’s an effort to limit cities and actually it’s been going on for several years now,” said Bennett Sandlin, Executive Director of the Texas Municipal League.
We recently spoke with the Sierra Club’s Conservation Director Cyrus Reed, who says the group’s worried about the precedent the ruling could set for other citizens or groups hoping to oppose similar licenses. Continue Reading →
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