Big freighters and small barges in the Houston Ship Channel near the site of the collision
U. S. Coast guard investigators are reviewing testimony they heard during a four-day hearing held last week in Galveston. They’re trying to learn what might have prevented the collision of a freighter with a barge carrying fuel oil in March. Some of what they heard points a finger right back at the Coast Guard.
Along Galveston Bay, the big collision is still fresh in the minds of people who have a front row seat to the very busy Houston Ship Channel. John McMichael is a retired Navy submarine officer who manages Seawolf park on Pelican Island.
“They knew they were there. They were on the radar. It’s hard to fathom that it would have happened in today’s world,” McMichael told StateImpact Texas.
The beef checkoff vote is about more than just a one dollar tax.
Forget the governor’s race. All across Texas people are voting over beef.
Friday is the final day for ranchers and others who deal in cattle to vote on implementing a Texas beef checkoff, a tax charged each time a cow is sold. There’s already a national beef checkoff that levies a one dollar assessment on the seller per cow.
The vote today is on a proposal to create a Texas checkoff, also for a dollar. If the proposal passes, most ranchers in the state will pay a two-dollar tax for each head of cattle they sell.
The government doesn’t collect this tax. The money goes to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board which then gives some of it to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. That industry group uses it to fund beef-related research and to promote beef. The same group also lobbies Washington on behalf of the beef industry. Supporters of the checkoff argue that the tax has raised the price of beef over the years by creating demand.
“Every time the price of beef goes up, it helps me,” says Texas Rancher Curtis Younts Jr., who supports the checkoff.
But the Texas vote has become about more than a one-dollar tax. Many are viewing it as a referendum on the way beef is taxed and promoted in Texas and the US.
In Texas, the Keystone XL pipeline is a forgone conclusion. Every day, up to 700,000 barrels of oil (both domestic crude and heavy oil commonly known as “tar sands,” extracted from Canada) make their way from Cushing, Oklahoma through the Gulf Coast segment of the Keystone XL pipeline to refineries in Texas. This section of the controversial project went ahead while the northern leg awaits presidential approval. Despite objections by some landowners and environmental groups, the southern leg began commercial operations earlier this year.
But one man just wants to know where the pipeline will actually run. And he’s been stymied again and again in his efforts to get that information. Thomas Bachand, a San Francisco photographer, finally got an answer this week from the U.S. Department of State on why they won’t release the info to him: Because the company behind the project, TransCanada, doesn’t want to. Continue Reading →
A "very early version" Google's prototype vehicle. The self-driving car doesn't include a steering wheel.
Google is taking the wheel – taking it literally out of the car.
The company is set to launch a test fleet of driverless cars in the near future. It’s completely re-imagining the automobile, removing fundamental features like the gas pedal and the steering wheel. The work raises a fundamental question: is there a market for such automated vehicles?
The Texas Standard’s David Brown spoke with University of Texas engineering professor Kara Kockelman, who has analyzed how driverless cars may impact our society. “We’re all incredibly busy, we’d love to have that time to be getting things done … legally … in our vehicle,” she says.
Although the technology is rapidly progressing, it isn’t without its share of drawbacks. Continue Reading →
Oil field workers wear these safety alert devices that detect hydrogen sulfide gas
Hydrogen sulfide — a gas that smells like rotten eggs — can be insidious in its lethality. Its odor will be unmistakeable to its victim. But the gas can quickly numb the sense of smell, leading to the belief that the threat has passed. Unconsciousness and death can follow.
“Unfortunately, if you come in contact with hydrogen sulfide there are not a lot of second chances,” said Sheldon McKee, director of business development at AMGAS, a Canadian company that makes equipment to remove hydrogen sulfide in the oilfields, where it can be a deadly risk for workers.
AMGAS opened an office last year in San Antonio to serve what the company sees as a growing need. Drilling for oil has surged just south of San Antonio in a swath of rural counties that comprise the Eagle Ford Shale. It’s an area known for what’s called “sour gas:” natural gas and crude oil with high amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Sour gas can also be found in parts of West Texas and in East Texas.
The new line was marketed as a BRT system, but the MetroRapid buses still need tinkering to meet those requirements.
Standing on Guadalupe Street in Austin facing the tower at the University of Texas, 26-year-old Emily Mandell waits at the bus stop with a scowl on her face. She’s not looking forward to this ride.
“It’s the same as sitting in traffic, but now you’re sitting in traffic stopping at a lot of places with a lot of other people,” Mandell says.
Along Guadalupe and Lavaca, two major north-south arteries through downtown Austin, long, bendy buses labeled “MetroRapid” have recently joined the chaos that is Austin traffic. The city of Austin’s transportation agency, Capital Metro, rolled out this new line in January* in an effort to get more people out of cars and using public transportation. But the rollout hasn’t gone as expected, calling into question how the agency will handle expanding transportation to meet the fast-growing city’s needs.
Now several months into the project, the line has made hardly a dent in Austin’s traffic problem. Board the fancy new buses at any given time of the day, and rows and rows of sparsely populated seats will likely wait for you. Continue Reading →
Big changes could be coming for Texas power plants. The Obama administration is announcing new rules today aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants – the chief culprit behind global warming.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power plants in the U.S. by 30 percent (from their 2005 levels) by 2030. That “is equal to the emissions from powering more than half the homes in the United States for one year,” according to the EPA. In Texas, that drop will need to be even higher: the state’s carbon emissions from the power sector will need to fall 39 percent by 2030 under the proposal.
The U.S. is already moving towards that goal, thanks in large part to the boom in shale gas drilling that has brought more natural gas into the energy mix. That has contributed to a 12 percent decline in energy-related carbon emissions between 2005 and 2012, according to federal statistics. The economic downturn and warmer winter weather may have also played a role in that decline.
In Texas, the leading carbon emitter in the country, the new rules could have a big impact, but the devil’s in the details.
The growing presence of methane in the water wells of a suburban Dallas community cannot be linked to nearby drilling activity even though methane levels have risen in several wells in the area since drilling began, according to a report released by the state’s oil and gas regulator. But other scientists who study the issue are not so sure there is no link to drilling.
The report released last week by the Railroad Commission of Texas says it found no evidence that elevated levels of methane in the water or the Parker county housing development ‘Silverado on the Brazos’ is caused by gas drilling operations. The report also says further investigation into a potential link “is not planned at this time.”
“I was surprised that the commission isn’t planning to do some more testing,” Rob Jackson, professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University who is also studying the issue, says. “Their own data found that five of eight water wells had increasing methane concentration through time. That alone seems like enough reason to follow up.”
Jackson is planning to publish his own findings on the region’s water. Another study by former EPA scientist Geoffrey Thyne indicates the methane is linked to drilling, though Range Resources, the drilling company that owns nearby drilling wells has dismissed the scientists findings, and says the methane is naturally occurring.
Ryan Sitton and Wayne Christian faced off to become the GOP nominee for Railroad Commissioner.
Tuesday night’s runoff elections exhibited a clear pattern: the candidate who most convincingly wore the mantel of Tea Party conservatism won the night on the Republican side. But in the race for a seat on the Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, the outcome was not so simple.
Wayne Christian, a former state lawmaker, lost that race even though he ran a campaign trying to “out-conservative” his opponent. Ryan Sitton, who owns an oil and gas engineering consulting firm, won.
That left many political reporters and pundits scratching their heads. Texas Observer politics writer Christopher Hooks summed it up in nicely when he tweeted: “Wonder why Wayne Christian is getting crushed tonight.”
Construction on the community’s new well system and treatment facility began only about a month ago.
Most Spicewood Beach residents came here to retire with modest savings. Now they feel stuck in depreciated homes with a strained water supply.
In recent months, the community has received some winter rain. Come summertime though, resident Steve Duich says his front lawn will look “like a parking lot.”
An empty above-ground pool sits in Duich’s front yard. Under Stage 4 emergency water restrictions, LCRA bans outdoor watering and urges for only essential water use.
LCRA trucks water into this neighborhood five to six times a day. This began in early 2012 as a temporary solution.
Kim Clifton, a cashier, says her business has managed to keep busy as the only general store in Spicewood Beach. Other businesses can’t stay afloat in this small, tourist driven economy.
Boat docks that once drifted along the shores of Lake Travis now rest on a dry bed of grass and rocks..
Along Lake Travis’ rocky shoreline, plant life is sparse.
Duich points high above the stream of Lake Travis to show where the water have dropped from in recent years.
Tony Castillo, like many residents here, has resigned himself to a constantly unstable water supply.
Behind the counter of a general store just off Highway 71, Kim Clifton, the cashier, shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head when asked about the lingering drought. “We just need more rain,” she says. She rolls her head back to let out an exasperated laugh, “Bring the rain! Bring it!”
It’s something you hear all the time these days across Texas, but chances are you’ll hear it the most in Spicewood Beach, Texas, a Lake Travis community about 40 miles from Austin. Just a little over two years ago, it made headlines as the first community in Texas to run out of water during the current drought.
In early 2012, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), which owns and manages the community’s water system, announced that groundwater levels were falling, leaving its well useless.
Those levels got so low LCRA began trucking in water five to six times a day as a temporary solution. Each load costs LCRA about 200 dollars.
Now, over two years later, LCRA plans to put the finishing touches on a new well system costing over a million dollars. The system was supposed to be completed last summer, but construction began just last month.
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