Update, November 2013: Quakes have now struck in a different area outside of Fort Worth near the town of Azle and Eagle Mountain Lake. You can read about that series of quakes (and see them mapped) here.  Yet another earthquake has rattled North Texas. Early Tuesday morning, the city of Keene, 25 miles south of Fort […]

Just after midnight on March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. 11 million gallons of oil spilled into the water, which soon made its way to shore. It took three years to clean up. It was the worst oil spill in history. That was until two […]

When water became scarce in Texas last year, scrutiny quickly fell on the state’s burgeoning energy industry. Proposed new coal plants had trouble getting water permits. And hydraulic fracturing drillers faced accusations of groundwater contamination and excessive water use. But at the House joint hearing on energy and natural resources held last Wednesday, industry leaders gave representatives […]

Fracking has dramatically increased the amount of gas extracted from shale plays around Texas, much of it moving in pipelines that come right through Baytown.

The debate has largely moved from what’s causing the quakes, to what can be done about it.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation it takes nearly1,200 trucks to bring a gas well into production. TxDOT says those trucks do damage to roads equal to nearly 8 million cars. That’s a lot of wear and tear. So it makes sense that the state of Texas roads would get some attention during the […]

There have been three low-level quakes in Texas in the last six days. All of them happened near oil and gas plays.

The saying goes, “Don’t Mess With Texas,” and that was certainly the attitude on display today when a group of Texas regulators testified before a Congressional committee in Washington. At a the hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power entitled “EPA Enforcement Priorities and Practices,” the head of the Railroad Commission of Texas, Barry Smitherman, […]

Did you know that America’s number one export is … garbage? Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of twelve books (and a former Austinite), examines this and other disquieting facts about American trash culture—literal trash culture, not the other kind—in his new book, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash. Americans, while making up only five […]

A growing shortage of freshwater is transforming into a commonplace global experience. Australia, Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, North East China, Argentina, portions of Brazil, and even Southern Europe are witnessing declines in freshwater availability. In the U.S., states that don’t normally experience drought conditions such as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Washington are now […]