Texas political leadership was in a celebratory mood today, after news spread that the state had won a battle in its ongoing legal disputes with the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court earlier in the week.
The decision Monday from the 5th US Court of Appeals effectively ordered the Agency to take a second look at TCEQ pollution control procedures. The EPA had initially said those procedures failed to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act. But the court found the Agency’s reasons were insufficient to prove that case and that it’s rejection of the Texas rules came long past the deadline when such rules can be nullified.The opinion read in part: Continue Reading →
Andrew Sansom is the Executive Director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University.
We’ve been posting videos and reports recently from a series on the drought by PBS Newshour done in collaboration with StateImpact Texas. The series is part of a larger project by PBS Newshour in partnership with local public media, Coping With Climate Change, that looks at how a transforming climate affect’s everyday life. Today’s piece is an interview with Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University, about current water policy and where the state can go from here.
Q: We’ve been telling a kind of “tale of two cities” for Robert Lee and Spicewood Beach. Can you explain to us why this is happening in Texas?
A: Well, it’s happening because Texas is one of the most rapidly urbanizing states in the United States. We expect that we will have twice as many people here in the next 40 or 50 years, and we have already given permission for more water to be withdrawn from many of our rivers than is actually in them today. So we’re reaching a crisis that’s brought on by declining water supplies and a rapidly growing population. Essentially, we’ve got more straws in the ground, which causes situations like Spicewood [Beach] and Robert Lee to occur.
Q: Considering the drastic measures that these two towns have had to take, like building a pipeline for a million and half dollars and trucking in water on a day-to-day basis, do you think the situation is likely to get worse?
A: I believe that it will get worse. I think it will get worse until we begin to make some fundamental changes in terms of how we view water, how we price it, and how we use it particularly. Continue Reading →
A new EPA rule puts future coal power plants at a crossroads.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued the first standard on greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act today for future power plants. The agency also says the rule “does not apply to plants currently operating or new permitted plants that begin construction over the next 12 months.” The bottom line: building a coal power plant is going to be a very unattractive option.
Under the new rule, which you can read in the embedded EPA fact sheet below, new fossil-fuel based power plants generating 25 megawatts or more of energy would be limited to emissions of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. Essentially, the rule favors natural gas power plants over coal. The EPA estimates that “95 percent of natural gas plants built since 2005 would meet the requirement.”
But for coal plants it’s another story. Drawing the line at 1,000 pounds of carbon emissions per megawatt-hour would eliminate most new coal power plants. According to the Washington Post, “coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.” Natural gas, on the other hand, “emits between 800 to 850 pounds.” Continue Reading →
Photo by Conservation History Association of Texas/Courtesy of Ken Kramer
Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter Director Ken Kramer
Ken Kramer, director of the Sierra Club in Texas, announced today that he will be retiring this summer, according to a release from the group. He is the first director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, a position he’s held since 1989.
The group says that Kramer “will remain active with the organization in various volunteer capacities, especially playing a leading role on water issues as Water Resources Chair for the state-level Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.”
More from the Sierra Club:
“I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had to work as a professional on state environmental issues in Texas over such a long period of time,” said Kramer. “Moreover, I’ve been fortunate to have had the support of numerous colleagues who have a passionate commitment to protecting public health and the environment. The enviable position that I’m in now is that because the Sierra Club has built such a strong cadre of staff and volunteers in Texas I’m free to retire and focus as a volunteer on the issues I care about the most while also spending more time with my wife and enjoying the outdoors that I’ve tried to protect.”
“The management of our water resources is perhaps the most critical environmental issue facing Texas in the 21st century,” Kramer continued, “and I look forward to concentrating most of my volunteer time for the Sierra Club on that issue. We must protect and manage our state’s water as efficiently and effectively as possible to meet the needs of both people and the environment. I’m dedicated to achieving that goal.”
The shorelines of Buchanan Lake recede during a record year of drought
If you’ve spent much time on the Highland Lakes in Central Texas (Buchanan, Inks, LBJ, Marble Falls, Travis and Austin) you’ve likely seen pipes running from residences down into the lakes. Some of those homes now sit over a hundred feet above the lake, thanks to drastically low lake levels over the last year. (Even after heavy rains this week, Lakes Buchanan and Travis are still less than half full.)
In February, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which manages the lakes, warned residents to stop sucking water out without a permit, which is against state law. At the time, an estimated 5,000 residents were doing so, 2,000 of them without a permit. (That number was even lower in 2009, when fewer than 60 had a permit.)
Now the LCRA says that an additional 1,200 people have signed up and contracted to draw water from the lake, bringing the total number of contracts to nearly 3,200. That leaves an estimated 1,800 people that still need to permit up, but the LCRA is happy with their progress.
“The response has been tremendous,” LCRA General Manager Becky Motal said in a news release. “The Highland Lakes are vital to the entire region, and it’s only fair that everyone pay for the water they use. We’re very impressed by the number of people who have decided to do the right thing.” Continue Reading →
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 →
Governor Rick Perry announced Friday that he has chosen Toby Baker to serve on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Baker will replace Commissioner Buddy Garcia on April 16th. Garcia’s term expired in August, according to Perry spokesperson Catherine Frazier.
A press release from the Governor’s Office outlines Baker’s work history:
Baker was most recently a policy and budget advisor on energy, natural resources and agriculture issues for the Governor’s Office, where he was also the liaison between the office and members of the Legislature, constituents, the Railroad Commission of Texas, TCEQ, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texas Department of Agriculture, and the Texas Animal Health Commission. He is a past natural resource policy advisor to Sen. Craig Estes, former director and clerk of the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Coastal Resources.
Just a day after 130 people were arrested protesting the Yankee nuclear power plant in Vermont, a commission of Texas and Vermont officials voted on new rules to allow low level nuclear waste from around the country to be brought to Texas for storage.
The vote from the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission put the final touches on a process approved by the State Legislature last year. Under the new rules, radioactive waste from other states can be transported to Texas for storage along the Texas/New Mexico border.
The storage facility is owned by Harold Simmons, a Dallas billionaire and major financial backer of Governor Rick Perry and other Texas politicians. It is “the only facility in the United States licensed in the last 30 years to dispose of Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste,” according to it’s website.
Some opponents worry about radioactive spills on the highway and possible water contamination at the site. They say they’ll closely watch each application to transport waste as it goes before the commission for approval. Continue Reading →
This article was reported by PBS Newshour in collaboration with StateImpact Texas.
All this week we’ve been posting videos and reports from a series on the drought by PBS Newshour done in collaboration with StateImpact Texas. (And a ten-minute television segment aired Thursday night on PBS, which you can watch here.) The series is part of a larger project by PBS Newshour in partnership with local public media, Coping With Climate Change, that looks at how a transforming climate affect’s everyday life. Today’s story focuses on Robert Lee in West Texas, a town of a little over a thousand people that nearly ran dry during the drought.
John Jacobs is the proud mayor of Robert Lee, where his family has lived since the Civil War. And he’ll tell you that he’s never seen anything like this.
“We started to get concerned about 2 years ago that it was going to turn into something,” Jacobs says. “Of course, like everyone else, we thought it was going to rain.”
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 →
About StateImpact
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
