Texas

Energy and Environment Reporting for Texas

For Texas, a Choice: Conservation or Rolling Blackouts

Mose Buchele / StateImpact

Trip Doggett is the President of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas

Yana Skorobogatov contributed reporting to this article.

If the state encounters another scorching hot summer like we had last year, the choice will be between rolling blackouts or ramped-up conservation, said Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT ) President Tripp Doggett at a State House hearing today.

“If we have the same summer as last summer, we had to have conservation [last summer] and everyone made a tremendous difference during those peaks on the hot summer days of last August. We’d have to have that, plus some [more], to survive this summer without rotating outages,” Doggett testified before the House Committee on State Affairs.

The state grid is expected to have a reserve margin of electricity slightly higher than 13.75 percent this year. That’s the safety cushion of electric capacity that exceeds forecast demand. And that cushion will be thinner this year. Last year, the margin was 17 percent and Texas still came dangerously close to rolling blackouts on two occasions.

Part of the problem the committee is looking into is how to encourage more power plants to be built. That’s difficult in a deregulated maket. When questioned whether state agencies had looked into encouraging public-private partnerships to build more plants Donna Nelson, Chair of the Texas’s Public Utility Commission said “my perception is that our market is premised on private investment… so no we haven’t.”

Living with Drought and Thirst: Examples for Texas to Follow

Photo by Mose Buchele/StateImpact Texas

The skeleton of a fish sits on the dry shores of Lake Buchanan, which is nearing historically low levels.

The State Comptroller’s office released a report on the economic impact of the current drought this week. The paper is short (just 12 pages), highly readable, and even has some nice visual breakdowns of the drought. I highly recommend taking some time to read it (embedded below).

Water demand in Texas is expected to rise 22 percent by 2060, according to the state’s Water Development Board. They say if we have another drought like the one of record from the 1950s, losses could total $116 billion by then.

One part of the report worth noting doesn’t come until the end, and that’s what can Texas learn from other places that have had to deal with growing populations, less water, and persistent drought. Let’s take a look.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Photo by Getty Images

The city of half a million discovered twenty years ago that its “aquifer was being drawn down twice as fast as nature could replenish it,” the report says. After enacting “aggressive” conservation and education campaigns, the city’s per capita usage fell by almost 38 percent. How’d they do it?

  • Pass on Grass. The city passed strict requirements on landscaping for new devlopments, “such as prohibiting the use of high-water-use grasses on more than 20 percent of a landscaped area.” Continue Reading

Another Round in Texas vs. the EPA: ‘Don’t Touch Our Fracking’

Railroad Comissioner David J. Porter believes the report is flawed, but says more research should be done.

Looks like those hoping the conflict between Texas and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would cool down after Rick Perry’s departure from the presidential race are in for some disappointment. On Tuesday, the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates drilling in the state, fired a shot across the bow of the EPA. The message? Don’t touch our fracking.

In a letter to the EPA, all three members of the Railroad Commission call to re-classify a December draft report that found a link between fracking and water contamination in Wyoming. Instead of labeling it a “draft” report, they want the EPA to call it a “highly influential scientific assessment,” a request also made by several Republican senators in late January.

Why do they want the new language? The commission says that under White House guidelines, if an investigation or report is “controversial or precedent-setting” then it is first released as a “highly influential scientific study” before becoming a “draft” report.

If this seems like semantics, and you’re scratching your head as to why the Railroad Commission of Texas cares about an EPA report on wells in Wyoming, there’s a clear explanation. Continue Reading

How Fracking, Drilling and Earthquakes Are Linked

Photo courtesy of Dr. Frohlich

Dr. Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas at Austin is researching the links between fracking and earthquakes.

StateImpact Texas intern Yana Skorobogatov researched and reported this article.

Enduring an earthquake is one of the least desirable ways to spend one’s New Year’s Eve, but that’s exactly what happened for many residents of Youngstown, Ohio. On December 31, 2011, a record-breaking 4.0 magnitude quake hit the midwestern town and left many residents understandably shaken up. It was the eleventh quake to disrupt the relatively sesimologically sound state that year, and partygoers weren’t the only ones affected.

The Ohio quakes were linked by officials and seismologists to disposal Injection wells used for storing fluid from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” These wells go deep underground and can hold waste fluids from hundreds of fracking wells.

Could Texas, with it’s 216,000 active injection wells, be next? South Texas experienced a magnitude 4.8 earthquake in October 2011 near the Eagle Ford Shale Play, which is home to many disposal wells. There have been other earthquakes linked to injection wells in the Barnett Shale.

We recently sat down with Dr. Cliff Frohlich, Associate Director of and Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, to learn more about the science behind artificially-induced earthquakes and figure out if Texas, too, is at risk.

Q: Can you give us a brief summary of the scientific community’s views about the possible connection between disposal wells and earthquakes?

A: In the scientific community, it was pretty much established in the 1960s that injecting fluids into the ground sometimes causes earthquakes. Prior to that, I don’t think people thought about it much. They had discovered that sometimes filling lakes will cause earthquakes. That was established in the 1930s when they built Lake Meade for the Hoover Dam. But in the 1960s there was a series of earthquakes in Denver that pretty much established this thought about fluid injection. Continue Reading

Texas Winter Defies Expectations, Eases Drought

Map by NOAA

Well, fortunately things did not go as planned. In early December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted a drier and warmer winter than normal for Texas and much of the South.

Happily, those forecasts were only half-correct.

While the Texas winter has thus far definitely been warmer than usual (with the notable exception of snowed-in Midland), it has also been much wetter, providing desperately needed rains to the state.

Central and North Texas had rains between “150 and 300 percent of normal,” NOAA says in a report published today, equaling anywhere from two to seven inches of rain. Yet they also say that stations in southern Texas only had between “five and 50 percent of normal precipitation.” Across the state, the average rainfall overall was 2.24 inches. “For Texas, it was the twenty-eighth wettest January on record (1895-2012),” NOAA says, “and the second consecutive month with precipitation greater than two inches.” It was the first time for two months with above-average rains in Texas in two years.

While the drought isn’t over, things have certainly improved, with some parts of north central Texas becoming drought-free. Continue Reading

An Interim To-Do List: What’s Ahead for the Lege in Energy

Photo courtesy of Texas Senate

Lt. Governor David Dewhurst wants the Texas Senate to look at several issues before the next legislature.

On Monday afternoon, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst released his interim charges to the Business & Commerce, Natural Resources and Government Organization Committees. What are interim charges? They’re issues that the respective senate committees look at leading up to the next legislative session, which is less than a year away. Some of these issues are being examined now so a bill will be ready to go once the legislature convenes. Essentially, the interim charges are a preview of what will be important for the next session, and as such, give us a sneak peak of what energy and environmental issues will be in the mix.

Dewhurst is currently running for the U.S. Senate, campaigning heavily against many policies of the Obama administration.

So let’s take a look.

Dewhurst directed the Natural Resources Committee to look at the potential effects of new and upcoming Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on:

  • “Electric reliability in Texas”
  • “Affordability of electricity in Texas”
  • “Competitiveness of energy intensive sectors of the Texas economy, and make recommendations to reduce the regulatory burden and maintain a business-friendly climate.”

That last one is likely to get some attention. Dewhurst listed the specific EPA regulations he wants the committee to look at, and they mirror almost exactly the EPA rules that the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation lambasted yesterday at a conference, calling it an “approaching regulatory avalanche.”

The Lieutenant Governor also directed the committee to look at several other issues. Here are just a few that caught our eye: Continue Reading

Even the Snow’s Bigger in Texas

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

A snow-covered police car sits outside the Super Bowl in Dallas on February 4, 2011

It’s been an odd winter thus far for much of the country, with warmer-than-usual temperatures in the U.S. and above-average rains in parts of Texas. But what you probably didn’t know is that Texas is currently besting some typically colder climes in the snow department.

Here’s the official word from Justin Kenney, director of communications at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who tweeted this today:

More #snow this winter in Midland TX (19.5″) than Chicago (13.9), Twin Cities (14.9), Boston (7.8) or New York (7.2).

While the panhandle is no stranger to snow, receiving about 18 inches a year on average, it must be odd for the folks in Midland. They’ve already broken their record for winter snow; the previous record was set in the winter of 1946-47 at 13.9 inches. At least they have plenty of oil to keep them warm.

Now Read This: StateImpact Texas Top 5

Photo by Mose Buchele/KUT News

Residents of Maverick County are concerned about the effects of a new coal project.

The big news of the week was the town of Spicewood Beach, Texas running out of water. Tanker trucks are now hauling in water as their wells have begun to fail. We also brought you stories of yet another “boom” in West Texas and a coal project at the border that some worry is going to have a negative impact. In case you missed them, here are our five big stories from last week:

  1. Why Did Spicewood Beach Run Dry? Maybe Because Their Water Was for Sale: Over the last year and all the way up until a few weeks ago, water was being sold from the Spicewood Beach water system to contractors and trucked out of the community.
  2. Why West Texas Hopes This “Boom” is Different: Lots of rigs, not enough homes, and luxury cars flying off the lot. Just don’t call it an oil “boom.”
  3. When Wells Run Dry: Spicewood Beach, Texas is Out of Water: This small community is making headlines for a lamentable first: It’s the first Texas town to run dry during the current drought.
  4. More Than One Million Gallons of Water Sold From Spicewood Beach Before it Ran Dry: At least 1.3 million gallons — and maybe more — were sold from the Spicewood Beach water system before its wells failed.
  5. Coal Project Sparks Fears at the Border: With U.S. coal exports to Mexico on the rise, border communities question the environmental cost.

Drilling’s Dangers: What Might Reduce Worker Deaths

Glasheen Valles Inderman Law Firm

Hard hat of rig worker injured in West Texas

As drilling for oil and gas has surged in Texas, so have injuries and deaths at drilling rigs and well sites. It has become a significant concern to Federal regulators and to the industry. But there are promising efforts to reduce accidents. One of those was hatched in South Texas.

The number of workers killed in Texas “mining”, as the Department of Labor classifies oil and gas drilling, has risen in the past decade. Deaths rose from 35 in 2003 to a high of 49 in 2007 and totaled 45 in 2010.

In South Texas, where drilling has surged in the Eagle Ford shale with its rich deposits of gas and oil,  seven workers died on-the-job last year alone, up from three in 2010 according to Michael Rivera, director of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA’s) office in Corpus Christi. Continue Reading

Lance Armstrong is Off the Hook for Doping. But is He Still Thirsty?

Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images

Armstrong is one of the top users of water in Austin.

As you’ve probably heard by now, federal prosecutors have dropped charges of doping against champion cyclist and Austinite Lance Armstrong.

While he’s probably breathing a big sigh of relief today, is he also taking a big gulp of water?

In October, we reported that Lance Armstrong is one of the top ten residential users of water in town. He used around 1.3 million gallons in the last year, according to data from Austin Water. (Coincidentally, that’s the same amount a water hauler trucked out of now-dry Spicewood Beach.)

It wasn’t the first time the cyclist had been caught using too much water. In 2008, The New York Times reported that he had used 330,000 gallons of water in one month — a month he hadn’t even been home at his three acre, 14,475 square foot estate. “I’m a little shocked,” he told the paper at the time. “There’s no justification for that much water. I need to fix this.” Continue Reading

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