A deadline is looming for many rice farmers in southeast Texas. If there isn’t 850,000 acre-feet of water in the Highland Lakes by midnight tonight, the Lower Colorado River Authority will not be sending water downstream for rice farmers this year. In this video by Jeff Heimsath for StateImpact Texas, we travel to Bay City, Texas to hear firsthand what this cutoff would mean for rice farmers and the businesses that depend on them. “We certainly don’t have any expectations of making any money,” says Joe Crane, who runs a rice mill in Bay City. “We’re just hoping to hold on.”
The combined storage of Lakes Buchanan and Travis, which typically hold much of the water for rice farmers, is at 846,800 feet as of 8 a.m. today. (An acre-foot of water is a volume measurement equal to about 325,800 gallons of water.) If more than 3,000 acre-feet of water — the equivalent of around a billion gallons — doesn’t come into the lakes by midnight tonight, most rice farmers will lose their season entirely.
For a while it looked like it was going to be really close. While just weeks ago the lakes held only 767,000 acre-feet, after heavy rains they rose rapidly. But those inflows slowly dropped, and for the last week have averaged only about 1,000 acre-feet of water a day. As of Tuesday morning, the lakes were at 842,000 acre-feet, leaving many rice farmers to give up hope, knowing it would take at least a week to get to the levels they needed.
And then, out of nowhere, the levels suddenly went up overnight Tuesday, reaching 846,000 acre-feet by Wednesday morning. If they could go up 4,000 acre-feet in a day, and there was still almost two days left before the deadline, perhaps there’s a chance after all, many thought.
But where did that water suddenly come from? It certainly didn’t rain. The Highland Lakes region has seen no more than a tenth of an inch of rain in the last week. Continue Reading →
Just how did the company beat the restraining order?
TransCanada’s motion to dissolve it (embedded below) outlines the argument that won over the judge. Under Texas law, temporary restraining orders can’t be given unless the “adverse party” (in this case, TransCanada) is given notice. The exception is if “immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to the applicant before notice can be served.” Crawford’s attorney argued that Caddo Indian artifacts on her land would be damaged, but TransCanada’s assurance that they wouldn’t appears to have won over the judge.
The company argues that since it had deposited twice the amount of the money it feels is fair market value for the land with the court, it was entitled to proceed with condemnation of Crawford’s property. In its motion, TransCanada estimates the amount it owes Crawford for the land and damages is $10,395.
New numbers were released by the Railroad Commission of Texas this week, which oversees oil and gas drilling in the state. And not surprisingly, they show growth in drilling in Texas.
Here are some of the big takeaways from the latest numbers:
Drilling permits are up over last year, with 1,581 issued in January versus 1,484 during the same month last year.
Crude oil production is up, with 32.4 million barrels produced in December 2011, up from 29.2 million in the same month in 2010.
But natural gas production is down, at 530.8 million Mcf (thousand cubic feet) in December 2011 versus 559.4 Mcf in the same month in 2010.
The shift to more oil production and less natural gas is very apparent. In January, there were 765 oil wells completed and only 234 gas wells completed. Last January, there were 368 oil wells completed and 286 gas wells. So you’re seeing more oil wells go in, and fewer gas wells. Continue Reading →
Barry Smitherman is the new chair of the Railroad Commission of Texas
In a unanimous vote this morning, the Railroad Commission of Texas elected a new chairman, commissioner Barry Smitherman. He’s been a member of the commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state, since July 2011, when he was first appointed by Governor Rick Perry. Smitherman will run for re-election to the commission this year.
Smitherman wasted little time during the announcement before going after federal regulation of the oil and gas industry. “As Texas energy production is increasing at an unprecedented rate, the Railroad Commission must continue to maintain a fair and predictable regulatory climate in this state,” he said in a release.
“As Chairman, I will continue to ensure that we meet the unscientific, politically-motivated decisions coming out of Washington, D.C. with science-backed, factually correct responses. We must not let the political appointees in Washington kill our economic engine and kill our jobs,” he said.
Smitherman has an outspoken disdain for any outside regulation of the oil and gas industry in Texas. In a guest column for the Texas Tribune on the Keystone XL pipeline in January, he called President Obama our “Dear Leader” (an overt reference to the now-deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il), and said the rejection of the pipeline was a big win for the “communist Chinese government” and “dictator Hugo Chavez.” He ended by saying that Obama “clearly lives in a fantasy land.” The company behind the pipeline announced Monday that they intend to go ahead and construct the portion from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries on the gulf coast of Texas. Continue Reading →
Haskell Simon represents rice famers in Bay City, Texas.
If you’re a rice farmer in southeast Texas, chances are you’re taking a close look at the level of the Highland Lakes a few hundred miles away. If those lakes aren’t at a certain level by midnight on Thursday, there will be almost no water sent downstream for rice farmers this year.
Under an emergency water plan adopted by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in late September in response to the drought, the combined storage of Lakes Buchanan and Travis has to be at 850,000 acre-feet by midnight on the night of March 1st in order for water to be sent downstream. (One acre-foot equals around 325,850 gallons of water.) Just weeks ago they were at 767,000 acre-feet, but after heavy rains they began to rise, and today sit at 842,000 acre-feet, or 42 percent of their capacity. Now around a billion gallons of water are standing between the farmers and the loss of a season. (Update: as of Wednesday morning, the LCRA says the lakes are at a combined 846,000 acre-feet, even closer to the cutoff point.)
That’s put some Highland Lakes residents and business owners in an unique position. “We were praying to not have too much rain,” says David Lindsay, a board member of the Central Texas Water Coalition, which represents lake interests. “Isn’t that perverse? Because we saw the wolf that would generate. If you release [that water] and we kept going into a drought like last year, then we truly could start to talk about putting the drinking water at risk.” Continue Reading →
The company behind the Keystone XL pipeline says they will go ahead and build the portion from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries in Texas.
David Barer of StateImpact Texas contributed reporting and research for this article.
Today’s announcement that Canadian pipeline company TransCanada would start construction on a section of its Keystone XL pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas didn’t come as a great surprise to those who have been watching the pipeline.
Ever since the Obama administration rejected TransCanada’s original request for a presidential permit to pipe tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas, TransCanada officials have been talking about building out the project incrementally.
“Quite frankly we need a presidential permit for about 50 feet of pipe. If we weren’t crossing that border than we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” TransCanada Public Relations representative Jim Prescott told StateImpact Texas earlier this year. “We’re ready to start putting pipe in the ground.”
The company says completing this part of the pipeline will help it move a bottleneck of crude oil from Oklahoma to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The full pipeline project – which would move crude from Alberta, Canada to Texas – is being re-submitted for approval at the federal level.
Opponents of the pipeline greeted today’s news with weary resignation. Continue Reading →
A stock pond south of Dallas, TX, dries up due to drought.
The drought has meant different things for different people in Texas. For many, it meant a brown lawn and fewer trips to the car wash. For others, it meant the loss of a crop, the sale of a ranch, or the disappearance of a lake. A new report gives us the opportunity to look at some of the science behind the drought that affected every Texan, and what may lie ahead in the future.
At a meeting of the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) last week, Bob Rose, LCRA’s meteorologist, presented a report on the drought and his forecasts for the months ahead.
Texas had its driest year on record in 2011, he said, with an average of 14.88 inches of rain. It was also the driest the state has been in nearly a hundred years: the previous record was set in 1917 with 14.99 inches. It was also the second hottest year on record, with an average temperature of 67.2 degrees. The hottest year ever in Texas also came nearly a century ago, in 1921. Continue Reading →
What was once a marina is now a cliff overlooking a dry riverbed in Spicewood Beach
To get to Spicewood Beach from Austin, you first drive through the Hill Country. You’ll pass a parcel of land scorched by wildfire and drive over a Pedernales River that has been reduced to a trickle, with docks awkwardly resting on the dry riverbed. When you get to the rusty barbecue smoker with the Confederate flag waving from its stack, you’re almost there.
Once you arrive, you’ll find a verdant golf course (as long as it’s rained recently). When things are right at the lake, you can stand on the green and look out to a vast expanse of water. But when things are dry, as they’ve been over the last year, it looks like a curtain’s been pulled back unexpectedly. Instead of a swimming area and marina, you find yourself standing at an awkward cliff. Below is a sandy bed and boulders not used to seeing sunlight. To the south, stairs that used to lead to the lake now dangle in the air.
Since Spicewood Beach’s wells began to fail nearly a month ago, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which owns and operates the water system, has been trucking water in to keep the taps running.
“So far, so good,” says Cathy Mull, who’s lived here about ten years, of the water hauling. “We’ve always had water since they started it.”
But just as they were getting used to the three or four truckloads a day, residents were warned things may soon have to change.
Photo courtesy hsld at http://www.flickr.com/photos/26555823@N08/
Texas power generation struggles to keep up with growing demand.
As Texans start packing away their winter clothes and looking ahead to months of heat, here are a couple of sobering facts: Texas has a booming population, and a strained electrical grid.
After last summer’s record breaking heat, the threat of rolling blackouts has become almost commonplace in the minds of many. The easy solution is building more power plants, but that’s not happening.
People point to all sorts of reasons for the dearth of new electrical projects coming online. Some blame EPA regulations; others say advances in renewable energy are coming too quickly to justify the investment. But the main cause is the low cost of natural gas. The same thing that’s driving down electric bills appears to be driving away investment in power plants.
“It affects the incentive to build new generation,” Kent Saathoff, Vice President of system operations with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT], told StateImpact Texas. Continue Reading →
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