An old radio lies in the mud exposed after the water has gone at Lake Arrowhead State Park near Wichita Falls, Texas, in September 2013
With nearly 70 percent of the state still stuck in a drought that has dragged on for years, there’s been plenty of talk about how to strengthen water supplies in Texas. A multi-billion-dollar water fund (the passage of Proposition 6 last election) is in the works that will help fund projects like reservoirs, desalination and conservation. And there’s ongoing discussion and debate about the elephant in the aquifer: ways to change how groundwater is regulated, which took up a whole day of testimony at the state legislature this week. But that’s not all.
Beyond those two big-ticket items — how to pay for water supplies and how to regulate water underground — there are some other smaller challenges the state faces when it comes to water. At a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee Thursday, several state agencies told lawmakers about the water challenges they’re dealing with. Here’s five issues that caught our attention:
1. ‘Toilet to Tap’ Could Mean Drier Rivers Downstream
Water reuse is picking up in Texas, but it could create problems for downriver communities. Customers currently pump treated wastewater back into a river, where its carried downstream to be treated and used again, but better techniques and technologies in water reuse are upsetting that system. Now communities like Wichita Falls in North Texas are moving towards direct wastewater reuse, and when that happens, there’s less water flowing downstream. Continue Reading →
New transmission line projects are already resulting in more wind power making its way to cities in Central and North Texas.
We’re all going to be paying for it, so you might be glad to know that a new set of transmission lines to bring wind power from the Panhandle and West Texas to folks in North and Central Texas appear to be off to a good start. According to a new federal analysis this week, the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones power transmission project, also known as CREZ, is already resulting in fewer curtailments of wind power and more even prices in Texas’ energy market.
The project cost $7 billion, a price that will be paid for by tacking on a fee to Texans’ utility bills. On average, your power bill could go up several dollars a month.
Before the lines went into operation, Texas had an odd problem: the state was producing too much wind power. Wind power grew so rapidly in Texas that it was a victim of its own success. More than half of the state’s wind power was built in a very short period, from 2006-09, according to the analysis from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and transmission couldn’t keep up. Continue Reading →
After a special session called by Mayor Jerry Morales yesterday, the Midland City Council has delayed a planned vote over its part of the Energy Towers project in downtown Midland.
The council was set to vote on whether to move forward with a $60 million incentives package for the project’s developers and plans to demolish the former Midland County Courthouse, with the possibility that the city might back out of the project.
Two council members (Jeff Sparks and Spencer Robnett) couldn’t be at Tuesday’s meeting, but the remaining members appeared encouraged by updates from the developers. The vote has now been pushed back to the council’s next meeting on July 8th. Continue Reading →
Wind turbines in West Texas help produce record amounts of electricity for the state.
In the coming years, the federal government wants Texas to reduce its carbon emissions by about 40 percent. With a goal like that, you might expect to see more programs aimed at promoting renewable energy in Texas. But something like the opposite appears to be happening.
Donna Nelson, chair of Texas’ Public Utility Commission, asked last month if wind power generators, not Texas utility customers, should pay for upgrades to transmission lines. The Commission regulates the state’s electric grid, among other things.
“This is really my attempt to flesh out some of the issues that are associated with the continued growth of renewable resources in Texas,” Nelson said. In a memo outlining her request, Nelson said wind and solar are already mature industries in Texas, and that federal subsidies distort the market. The federal tax credit for wind power was allowed to expire last year, but could be renewed by Congress this year.
Nelson’s idea got a lot of people talking. Texas’ much-touted Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) transmission line project, that brings wind power from the West, were paid for by electric customers to encourage renewables. Those lines, along with federal subsidies, brought a boom in Texas wind power.
A boom, critics say, that Nelson of the PUC is trying to hinder by exploring the idea of a fee or tax. Continue Reading →
Exhibit from lawsuit: worker's time sheet showing 90 hours in eight consecutive days
In states with the most oil and gas drilling, including Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, the U.S. Department of Labor has won back pay for over 4,000 energy industry workers in just the past year.
It totaled $6.7 million dollars, accounting for a third of all such settlements by all types of industries nationwide.
“We were hearing that workers were being misclassified as independent contractors, that they were being paid straight-time for their hours over 40 in a workweek. And we were hearing this consistently throughout the Southwest Region,” said Cynthia Watson, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Regional Administrator in Dallas.
The Parrs say drilling near their property made them sick. A Dallas jury agreed, awarding them nearly $3 million.
A Texas family claiming emissions from gas drilling made them sick is one step closer to collecting a $3 million jury award against the drilling company, Aruba Petroleum.
When the Parr family of Wise County won their case, it was called the first successful “fracking lawsuit” in the county. Aruba asked Dallas County Judge Mark Greenberg to throw out the three million dollar verdict. But late Thursday Greenberg denied that motion.
The case is important because drilling companies often reach out-of-court settlements with plaintiffs. Those can include gag orders. This time there was no settlement, so the details of the Parrs’ sickness, including nosebleeds, rashes and stomach problems were made public.
The case is being closely watch by industry and groups opposed to fracking.
Tom McGarity, a law professor at UT Austin calls the judge’s ruling “a bad precedent for the industry.”
“I think there are plaintiffs’ lawyers out there right now that are looking at this case and saying this is a really opportunity here to raise claims by people who have been damaged either in their property values or health,” he says.
A panel of experts gathered in Azle Wednesday night to talk about what's behind the North Texas earthquake swarm.
What is behind the tremors in North Texas? Starting late last fall, a swarm of quakes struck the communities of Reno and Azle outside of Fort Worth. It’s hardly the first community in the Lone Star State to have to deal with damaged foundations, cracked windows and rude awakenings from quakes: there have been nine other scientifically-researched quake swarms in Texas, all of them in areas of oil and gas drilling activity.
The community forum, featuring a panel of officials and experts, explored what we currently know about the quakes, what can be done about them, and whether or not state regulators and legislators are up to the task of taking actions to prevent more quakes in the future. Here’s what we learned, and some of the questions that remain unanswered: Continue Reading →
The Lower Colorado River Authority has to meet Central Texas Water demands even as the supply dwindles.
As summer sets in and drought drags on, the growing burden of a strained water supply is weighing on Texans in the Lower Colorado River Basin.
The board of directors for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), the quasi-state organization that controls water from that basin, voted unanimously on Wednesday to raise water prices for some customers and to not release water downstream to farmers for a third consecutive year.
“The drought rate is needed to cover our cost during the drought when we’re selling less water to many of our customers and other utilities that have large fixed costs that don’t change based on the weather,” said John Hofmann, Executive Vice President of Water at LCRA.
Azle and Reno are the epicenter for the North Texas earthquake swarm.
On Wednesday night, StateImpact Texas and KERA Dallas hosted a community forum in Azle, ‘What’s Behind the North Texas Quakes?’ The goal of the forum was to bring together experts and civic leaders to address a swarm of tremors that began late last fall that could be tied to oil and gas production. Read our full story on the forum here.Â
Moderated by KERA’s Doualy Xaykaothao, the panel included state Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford), Reno Mayor Lynda Stokes, SMU Associate Professor of Geophysics Heather DeShon, Bill Stevens of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, and our reporter Mose Buchele.
The forum explored what we currently know about the quakes, what can be done about them, and whether or not state regulators and legislators are up to the task of taking actions to prevent more quakes in the future. We have a full story here on the forum, and audio of the whole event here for you to listen to:
Audience members were also invited to ask questions of the panel. Here’s that portion of the forum:
And here’s a collection of tweets covering the event: Continue Reading →
North Texas has the largest onshore natural gas field in the state, and some experts believe it may be the largest in the country. So when a swarm of earthquakes hit the cities of Azle and Reno beginning six months ago, local residents started asking questions. Scientists have linked the disposal of drilling wastewater used in fracking to earthquakes in Texas and other parts of the country. Now seismologists are studying the quakes in Parker and Tarrant Counties to monitor where the earthquakes occur, when and why.
What’s Behind the North Texas Quakes? A KERA/StateImpact Texas Discussion will be moderated by KERA Senior Reporter Doualy Xaykaothao, who has covered major earthquakes in Japan, Indonesia and Thailand. The panel discussion will include state Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, Reno Mayor Lynda Stokes, SMU Associate Professor of Geophysics Heather DeShon, and StateImpact Texas reporter Mose Buchele, who’s covered the oil and gas industry for many years. Audience questions will be moderated by StateImpact Texas reporter Terrence Henry.
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
