NRG Limestone Electric Generating Station in Limestone County
When it comes to spectator sports, it might not rank with college football in Texas. But when a state senate committee held a hearing last week to figure out if something is wrong with the state’s deregulated market for electricity, people far from Texas were glued to their computers, watching the hearing live over the internet.
“In all my experience, I’ve never really seen anything in which the Texas Public Utility Commission’s officials have been taken to task in such an aggressive manner by a state legislative hearing,” said Paul Patterson, a New York-based investment analyst who watched the hearing.
Patterson and others who keep close tabs on the nation’s electricity industry are eager to see how Texas handles a problem also facing other states: is there a risk of power shortages if more power plants aren’t built? And if the risk is real, who will foot the gigantic bill? Continue Reading →
A map of recent earthquakes (in red) and oil and gas wastewater disposal wells outside of Fort Worth. Active disposal wells are in green; inactive wells are in yellow. Map by Michael Marks/Terrence Henry
UPDATE: Another earthquake, magnitude 2.7, hit two miles north of Azle, Texas at approximately 9:44 Tuesday morning the 3rd of December according to the United States Geological Survey.
Another earthquake struck near the town of Azle just after midnight Friday, measuring 3.2 on the Richter scale. It was the 17th quake in the area around Eagle Mountain Lake (northwest of Fort Worth) in November, the largest a 3.6. No injuries have been reported from the quakes, but one local tells StateImpact Texas that the quakes are causing damage to homes and unnerving residents.
“It has damaged my house, my driveway is cracking down the driveway,” says Rebecca Williams of Azle. Cracks have also appeared on the outside of her home and in a retaining wall in her backyard. “When these [earthquakes] happen, my whole house shakes,” she says.
What’s behind the tremors? The area is not known for its seismic activity, but does have several wells used for disposing of wastewater from oil and gas drilling. Water used during the fracking process, as well as water that comes back up the well with oil and gas deposits, is typically disposed of by injecting it deep underground into wastewater wells. Those disposal wells, often located a mile or deeper underground, have been known to cause earthquakes in other parts of Dallas-Fort Worth, as well as other states like Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio. And they are the likely culprit here, says Ken Morgan, Director of the Energy Institute at Texas Christian University. Continue Reading →
How much energy does it take to get you to Thanksgiving dinner and get dinner on the table in the first place?
Pie. Planes. Political arguments at the family table. It all takes energy – but how much exactly?
As the busiest travel days of the year intersect with back-to-back days of excess consumption and consumerism, it’s a good time to take a step back and assess the energy impact of Thanksgiving.
Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, is just the person to do that. He put together a look at the carbon imprint of Thanksgiving, and what he found will likely bring you down a bit. Sure, there are those flights and car trips that require fuel, but there’s also the massive amount of energy needed to get all that food on the table.
Take a listen:
Disclosure: The Energy Institute has been a sponsor of StateImpact Texas.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas is proposing a change to the way the state’s electricity market is run. And some lawmakers voiced concerns during a public hearing at the Capitol yesterday.
Right now, power companies get paid when they produce electricity. The change could end up paying those power companies twice: once for the power they produce, and a second time just for owning or building power plants. The proposal is aimed at encouraging power companies to build new plants – to help avoid power shortages that have led to rolling blackouts in the past. Continue Reading →
Warren Samuelson is the Manager of the Dam Safety Program at the TCEQ.
Recent rain and snow haven’t been enough to replenish Texas’ water supply. Years of drought have taken their toll on the state’s reservoirs, some of which remain nearly empty.
Eventually, the reservoirs should fill back up. (Hopefully.) But it’s unclear if Texas’ infrastructure will be able to hold back the waters once that happens.
Experts say that Texas’ dams have incurred severe damage because of the drought and subsequent rains. Dry conditions can cause cracks to form in the dams, which undermines their structural integrity.
Pedernales Falls State Park, a popular destination outside of Austin.
For state parks in Texas, the struggle has always been money. In the early 1900s, Texas landowners tried to donate large tracts of property to create state parks. But they were turned down by state lawmakers  — they didn’t want to fund the maintenance cost. So when the land was accepted, it was without the promise of upkeep. Now, as the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department winds down its 50th year in operation, it seems like very little has changed.
“I think, in a way, the parks exemplify the worst that we’ve got in budgeting, as far as the Senate and House are concerned,” state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, said at a panel on parks during the Texas Tribune Festival earlier this year.
And here’s why he thinks that: Texas Parks and Wildlife is the only state agency with a dedicated sales tax. Under state law, a portion of the sales tax on sporting goods is meant to go for parks. But lawmakers consistently divert some of that money to balance the state budget.
“If you’re raising $260 million, and you’re using 25 percent of that for its intended purpose, and then you’re back-loading to certify the budget the balance of it — Well, then you’re leaving your parks out.”
The situation was even worse for parks a few years back when the department’s budget was slashed along with those of most other state agencies. Continue Reading →
Sarah Lucas, of Ennis, Texas, guides her European Cross Steer to the Steer Show in the snow at Fort Worth Stock Show, Friday, February 4, 2011, in Fort Worth, Texas.
Texas is seeing its first real winter storm this weekend, and already parts of the Panhandle are seeing trace amounts of snow.
Snow is welcome precipitation for a part of the state that is still struggling with extreme drought. But it takes a lot of snow to have the same effect as just a small amount of rain.
Light dusting of snow at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in the Panhandle
“In general, one inch of snow is the equivalent about .10 inch of rain. So, ten inches of snow would be one inch of rain,” says Victor Murphy, Climate Program Manager with the National Weather Service Southern Region.
That 10:1 ratio means it would take an extraordinary amount of snowfall to provide real drought relief in the Panhandle. Big snow events in the past in the Panhandle rarely go above five inches, which would equal a half-inch of rain. A big snow season can total over 40 inches, i.e. just four inches of rainfall equivalent overall. But snow is not without its benefits. Continue Reading →
Austin's seeing brighter leaves this fall, thanks to recent rainfall.
Think of fall’s turning leaves, and Texas may not be the first state to come to mind. But Austinites have seen their fair share of autumnal red and gold this year – thanks in large part to recent rains.
Jerry Brand, a molecular bioscience professor at the University of Texas, says the color changes in the leaves are due to a specific molecule called a carotenoid.
“These color molecules called carotenoids can come in several different colors depending on the plant, depending on the light intensity they’ve been exposed to, and other environmental factors,” Brand says.
“So that’s why some leaves look more yellow in color, some look brilliant red in color and some look more orange in color,” he continues. “It’s because there’s more categories of these carotenoids, and which ones are dominant depends on the plant species – and that also depends on the environmental conditions they’ve been exposed to.” Continue Reading →
Now that Texas voters have given the green light to put serious money towards new water projects in the state, where do we go from here? How will projects get prioritized and funded? Will conservation be a properly-sized piece of the pie? What should we expect from state leaders going forward?
Those are just a few of the subjects on tap tonight at a forum at the University of Texas at Austin, ‘Water, Politics, and Drought: Remaking Texas Water Policy.’ The non-profit organization Texas Water Journal and UT’s Environmental Science Institute are putting together the event, which is free and open to the public:
A map of recent earthquakes (in red) and oil and gas wastewater disposal wells outside of Fort Worth. Active disposal wells are in green; inactive wells are in yellow. Map by Michael Marks/Terrence Henry
Ten  Seventeen* earthquakes in just a month, the biggest a magnitude 3.6. That’s what small towns like Azle and Springtown Northwest of Fort Worth have had to deal with recently. (*More quakes have struck Azle since this story was originally published: on November 21, 23, 25, 26 and 29. The Nov. 25 quake measured 3.3.)
The region is also home to several disposal wells, which are used to store massive amounts of wastewater from oil and gas drilling. In other parts of the Barnett Shale drilling area disposal wells have been linked to similar series of quakes. You can see where the quakes have occurred recently around the town of Azle, as well as active and inactive disposal wells in the region, in the map above. The quakes are in Tarrant and Parker counties.
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Now that Texas voters have given the green light to put serious money towards new water projects in the state, where do we go from here? How will projects get prioritized and funded? Will conservation be a properly-sized piece of the pie? What should we expect from state leaders going forward?