Juan Rico works in an cotton field that is watered by an underground irrigation system July 27, 2011 near Hermleigh, Texas.
The Texas Panhandle’s corn crops are greener now than they have been in many months. Recent rainfall has given this season’s crops a new lease on life. But, corn crops thirty years from now might not be so lucky. The rapid depletion of the Panhandle’s groundwater supplies could dramatically alter the character of agriculture in the region.
A new study on groundwater depletion in the Central Valley of California and the High Plains Region has placed most of the blame on agriculture irrigation practices. Researchers at the University of Texas claim that the Texas Panhandle will be unable to sustain irrigated agriculture within the next thirty years if current patterns of groundwater use continue.
“Current rates of replenishment in the Panhandle are very low and we are basically pulling out water faster than it is being replenished,” says Dr. Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology. “It’s just like a bank. If you withdraw money faster than you deposit money, you will eventually run out. The groundwater depletion rate in the northern Texas panhandle is now at least ten times its recharge rate.”
And the Central Valley of California faces a similar situation. Continue Reading →
If you’re a fan of the wide-eyed Doc Brown in Back to the Future or the type who’s curious how many megawatts it took to blow up Alderaan in Star Wars, you’ll want to check out a special show airing on public television in Austin tonight, Energy at the Movies.
Michael Webber, who leads the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin, takes a look at the last seventy years of film and how they portray issues of energy. It’s a lecture he’s been giving for several years, and is now even a class at UT. On the list of films are classics like Deliverance (which involves hydroelectric power) and Zoolander (coal mining) and Syriana (oil).
You can catch Energy at the Movies tonight in Austin at 8 p.m. on KLRU (Channel 255, Time Warner Cable; Channel 284, Grande Communications; Channel 18-3 Over the Air), and again Sunday at 1 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Oil prices are finally going down (for the moment, anyways) but this year has been pretty painful at the pump. While price is most on our minds, there’s also plenty to think about with the production and impact of oil.
A new art app for the iPad aims to get viewers to think deeper on the subject.
The new app is simply called “Edward Burtynsky: Oil,” and features over a hundred images by the renowned photographer of industry. (Nearly a quarter of the images have counterpart audio-commentary by the artist). The app coincides with exhibitions of the same work at The Photographers’ Gallery in London (there’s video of that on the app, too) and at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno starting June 9. The goal? To get people to think more about the oil industry’s impact. Continue Reading →
There is disagreement over whether higher wholesale prices could raises costs for residential customers
With warnings piling up that Texas could face power blackouts this summer, a consulting group gave its support to the Texas Public Utility Commission’s (PUC) proposal to dramatically increase the cap on the wholesale price of electricity during critical, high demand times. The idea is to make Texas a more profitable electricity market so investors will be willing to fund construction of new power plants.
The Brattle Group report to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) recommends tripling the maximum wholesale price “from the current $3,000 to $9000…but impose this price cap only in extreme scarcity events,” said the report.
Those figures are in keeping with what the PUC has proposed and which the commission’s chairman wants to start phasing in this summer.
Where the Keystone XL pipeline would go through Texas.
UPDATED
An official with the EPA has told StateImpact Texas that the route of the pipeline has changed since the EPA letter was sent in November.
Under the new route the EPA will not be involved in the review.
EARLIER
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter late last year raising concerns that the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline might require more stringent permitting than planned by the Army Corp of Engineers, according to a report from the Associated Press. Continue Reading →
The state drought map released Thursday, May 31. The tan and red areas denote areas in drought.
After so much progress over the winter months, it’s a let down to see the drought map released today by the U.S. Drought Monitor showing a slight reversal in recent trends.
Despite an overall retreat of drought in Texas, the percentage of the state experiencing drought conditions actually increased by two percentage points since last week.
The Drought Monitor map released today reveals that 59.18% of the state is still in drought conditions, with parts of northwest Texas continuing to harbor islands of extreme and exceptional drought.
Recent weather for much of the state should allay some alarm, however. Wet weather passed through the Dallas-Fort Worth area yesterday and is in the forecast for much of the central and eastern parts of the state today. Still, some analysts say it’s anybody’s guess if wetter trends will continue. Continue Reading →
Juan Rico walks by a barren cotton field July 27, 2011 near Hermleigh, Texas. A severe drought has caused the majority of dry-land (non-irrigated fields) cotton crops to fail in the region.
If you’re a farmer in the Midwest, chances are your land values have gone up recently. A new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Mo. says that irrigated farmland value in those areas grew more than 30 percent over the last year’s first quarter. Factors such as higher crop prices and timely rains have caused demand for cropland to persist.
But if you’re a Texas farmer, you’re not seeing the same growth. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ most recent survey shows that Texas farmland values remain largely unchanged. Irrigated land values rose a little bit – up 9%. But cropland and ranchland values are essentially the same as they were this time last year, while they have gone up between sixteen and thirty percent in the Midwest.
Emily Kerr of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says that drought is definitely a factor in Texas’ agricultural land value stagnation. Continue Reading →
It says while most of the nation has adequate reserves of electric power to make it through the summer, Texas may not.
“Given the expected reserve margin in the ERCOT Region for the 2012 summer season (below the minimum Reference Margin Level), unavailability of one or more large thermal generators due to the compliance requirements of the CSAPR or, in fact, for any reason (such as an extended maintenance outage), would increase the risk of emergency conditions during 2012 summer peak load hours, and could necessitate rotating outages in the event of extreme heat or significant other generation unit outages.”
A man shelters from the rain under his umbrella as he passes a giant mural showing the drought-affected Australian outback in 2007.
A growing shortage of freshwater is transforming into a commonplace global experience. Australia, Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, North East China, Argentina, portions of Brazil, and even Southern Europe are witnessing declines in freshwater availability.
In the U.S., states that don’t normally experience drought conditions such as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Washington are now watching water caches run dry. “Drought is a trend, rather than just a temporary event,” says Michael Hightower, a representative of Sandia National Laboratories, “We are in about a three hundred-year drought that has been ongoing since the mid-1700s.” Hightower spoke about the challenges and opportunities for the expansion of water availability at the 2012 Water Summit hosted by the University of Texas at Austin’s Academy of of Medicine, Engineering and Science.
“I don’t think our political systems are set up to handle drought,” says Hightower. He cites the growing connections between energy development and water availability as a key justification for water resource expansion. He says that water availability issues are already impacting new energy development, like with fracking (a single hydraulic fracturing well requires up to three million gallons of water) and ethanol production (which requires three to four thousand gallons of water per bushel of corn).
So, what tools do we have to decrease the growing gap between our water resources and energy development plans? Continue Reading →
A coalition of Texas institutions announced a new water conservation and technology center today. It’s a group effort, headed by Texas AgriLife Research, Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Engineering Experiment Station, and Texas A&M University-San Antonio.
Dr. Neal Wilkins, the director of the Texas Water Resources Institute, hopes that the new center will put the development of new technologies on the fast track to solving the state’s evolving water challenges.
“The center will accelerate the development and adoption of new and innovative technologies to solve emerging water problems and meet future water supply needs,” he said in a statement.
Researchers at the center will target four research areas: water conservation, water reuse, groundwater desalination, and energy development.
Among some of the first issues on the table is the link between energy development and water use. Continue Reading →
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