In October, word got out of a scuffle between scientists and the Texas government. On one side, Rice University oceanographer John Anderson, who submitted an article on rising sea levels for a report to be published by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on Galveston Bay. On the other, the TCEQ itself, which didn’t like some of what Anderson had to say, and excised his references to climate change and human impacts.
An agreement has now been reached between the two parties that will result in Anderson’s article being published in the commission’s report. Continue Reading →
FM 3278 crosses the Trinity River just downstream from the Lake Livingston Dam
Once called the “River of Death” because it was so polluted with sewage and waste from slaughterhouses, the Trinity River has defied the great drought and helped maintain one of Houston’s critical supplies of water. And much of the credit goes to what a century ago made the river so polluted: the wastewater from Dallas-Fort Worth.
The Trinity flows past Dallas and goes south 200 miles to Lake Livingston. Even after the long summer of record drought and heat,
Map courtesy TRA
Click on the image above to trace the Trinity River Basin's route.
thousands of gallons of water still cascade every second down the lake’s spillway. From there, the flow again takes the form of a river and 80 miles later, the Trinity ends at Trinity Bay on the Gulf of Mexico.
Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica (Creative Commons)
Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results.
The company behind a fracking well in Wyoming that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says may have contaminated water sources held a conference call today. Encana, the company that owns the drilling operation, faulted the EPA’s methodology and objectives. The call provided a good indication of how the company, and perhaps the fracking industry at large, is going on the offensive.
The EPA’s report is receiving so much attention because it is the first report from the federal government that links hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) to contamination of water. Chances are if you didn’t know what fracking was before, you do now. The process of drilling horizontal wells deep underground and pressure-blasting a mix of water, sand and chemicals into rock shale formations to release deposits of oil and gas is a relatively new innovation in the drilling world, and has only begun to be used widely in the last decade. And now fracking is in turns being pilloried, defended, questioned and lauded. With the agency’s new report, the debate over fracking has reached a new volume. Continue Reading →
Electricity transformer station in downtown Houston
Even in Texas, where it may seem the sky’s the limit for making fortunes in the energy business, there are rules. Or at least, there are rules when it comes to the price of one form of energy: electricity.
In this case, there is the rule called a “price cap” and it’s imposed by state regulators on the wholesale price of electricity (what retail providers pay for the electricity they then sell to you). Now, the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) may raise the cap, letting big power generating companies make more money during times of enormous demand. Continue Reading →
A natural gas well drilling rig in Sublette County, WY
It’s been only a few days since the EPA released draft findings of contamination by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) drilling operations in Wyoming, and already the industry is attempting to drill holes in the EPA’s findings. Residents near the drilling sites in Pavillion, Wyoming asked the EPA three years ago to investigate possible contamination after noticing water from their wells started tasting and looking off. So what has been the industry’s response?
Question the evidence. The company behind the alleged contamination, Encana, clearly hopes to discredit the EPA’s findings. In a lengthy press release Monday, the company said the EPA’s findings are “irresponsible” and full of discrepancies. The EPA’s “conclusions do not stand up to the rigor of a non-partisan, scientific-based review,” the company said, but Encana doesn’t say if that scientific review has been performed or not. (The EPA released the findings in draft form to allow public input and scientific review, which they say is standard practice.) And while attempting to discredit many of the EPA’s discoveries, Encana also points to other EPA evidence as vindicating. “The EPA’s reported results of all four phases of its domestic water well tests do not exceed federal or state drinking water quality standards for any constituent related to oil and gas development,” the Encana release states. Continue Reading →
Galveston seawall (fore) stopped erosion that otherwise moved coastline hundreds of feet inland (back)
To some researchers, what’s happening to the sea level on the Texas Gulf Coast is a clear and present danger. But they worry the word is not getting out, or that the State of Texas is diluting it.
“It’s happening right now, the evidence is clear all around the region,” said David Yoskowitz of the rise in the sea level. Yoskowitz is an economist with the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Continue Reading →
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees much of the state’s power, released projections this week for grid reliability over the coming years. ERCOT says rolling blackouts like the ones we had last winter remain a possibility. The report includes a list of energy projects that it expected to be online by now but are still on hold, adding to the state’s power crunch.
A coal plant that was supposed to come online east of Waco will not be generating power, according to the council. An accident at the Sandy Creek coal plant during a commissioning test has caused damage to equipment that will keep the plant offline until the spring of 2013, says ERCOT CEO Trip Doggett. “We just learned of that in the past few weeks,” he says, “that was a significant surprise.” What exactly happened at the plant? “I don’t have intimate details there,” Doggett says, noting that they had been told about it during the past few weeks. Continue Reading →
In a large, two story home in a wooded subdivision near where for years the Texas oil industry has drilled for black gold, three women have gathered around the kitchen table.
Dave Fehling/StateImpact Texas
Karen Darcy (left) and Rebecca Kaiser
“No one could believe what was happening,” said Rebecca Kaiser, whose two young children played upstairs.
She’s talking about a day some ten months earlier when she and carloads of her fellow Montgomery County residents angrily left a meeting of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
“It’ll be horrible,” Hoagland said of the project, which will inject toxic waste into old oil wells near her town of Conroe. She fears it’ll not only threaten the purity of the well water she drinks but fill the road out in front of her house with tanker trucks bringing the waste in from petrochemical plants outside Houston. Continue Reading →
A falling building at the former ASARCO/Encycle plant
Last week StateImpact Texas reported on a former hazardous waste plant that sits at the edge of a residential neighborhood in Corpus Christi. The Encycle facility, which opened as a hazardous waste plant in 1989, was ultimately shut down for pollution violations. Encycle and its parent company ASARCO filed for bankruptcy after agreeing to $1.7 billion in settlements for polluting.
You can now read what an insider at the plant told the EPA about how the facility ran their operations and endangered the local community. The document was released last year by the EPA, and as the waste plant is finally coming down, it makes for relevant reading. Continue Reading →
The closed entrance to the former Encycle plant in Corpus Christi, Texas
What would it be like to grow up down the street — literally a block away — from a plant that treats hazardous waste? For the residents of the Dona Park neighborhood in Corpus Christi, this isn’t a hypothetical question. For fourteen years, the Encycle plant treated hazardous waste just 950 feet away from the neighborhood, which is also surrounded by six major refineries.
As you can see from the map below, the Encycle plant sits right at the edge of four long residential blocks, consisting of nearly three hundred homes. The plant is now being demolished, but families in Dona Park worry that as it’s being torn down, it could pollute the neighborhood again. Continue Reading →
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