A map showing areas where smoke was heaviest in 2011 according to the NRDC.
Texans know all too well the devastation that wildfires bring to land, property, and community. Now, research claims to show how smoke from those fires could pose hazards hundreds of miles away, though researchers say there is a need “to look more closely” at the data.
The study was conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that looked at NOAA satellite smoke plume maps from 2011 to gauge where heavy concentrations of smoke could affect people’s health. Its findings: many Americans lived in areas impacted by smoke even if they lived far from wildfires.
“Nearly 212 million Americans lived in counties affected by smoke conditions at some time in 2011,” Kim Knowlton, an NRDC environmental health staff scientist and Columbia University Professor said in a telephone press conference.
The Chevrolet Volt charges at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2011
The rise of electric cars in Texas has brought up a concerning scenario: What if too many cars charge their batteries at the wrong time, potentially overloading the Texas grid? If, say, thousands of cars all plug in during a hot Texas summer weekday afternoon, when power supplies are already tight, would it possibly be enough to push those slim margins past the edge?
A new analysis suggest there may not be much to worry about after all.
2011 was the driest year in Texas’ recorded history — crops failed, herds were sold off and lakes and reservoirs literally went dry. Some communities, like Spicewood Beach in the Hill Country or Robert Lee in West Texas, had to scramble to find new water supplies. And in the middle of this catastrophic drought, the state of Texas had one vocal strategy: Pray for rain. Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a proclamation that year asking Texans to pray for rain for three days.
Now, a few dry years and billions of dollars in drought losses later, the state has decided it needs a more consistent strategy to secure water. “We can’t make it rain,” Perry said at a recent event. “But we can take measures to extend our existing water supply and work to develop new supplies.” Perry was out stumping in support of Proposition 6, a state constitutional amendment on the ballot this year.
“What Prop 6 does is put in place 2 billion dollars so the state can lend money to utilities and cities that are seeking to do either conservation projects or new water supply projects,” says Laura Huffman, Texas state director for the Nature Conservancy.
That $2 billion would come from the state’s surpluses, known as the Rainy Day Fund, to create a fund for new water projects. It’s drawn widespread, bipartisan support, from businesses to environmental groups. Continue Reading →
New numbers from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that energy-related carbon emissions continue to fall in the country, down nearly four percent last year. “The 2012 downturn means that emissions are at their lowest level since 1994 and over 12 percent below the recent 2007 peak,” the EIA reports.
Those declines have occurred in 5 out of the last 7 years, even last year as the economy began to recover.
So what’s behind the change? The EIA credits several factors: increased energy efficiency (i.e. appliances that use less power), warmer weather (meaning less heating for homes), more efficient vehicles, and more natural gas in the power sector instead of coal. (Renewable energy actually declined last year, due to less hydro power being used.)
While the declines are positive news, they likely aren’t enough to reverse an emissions trend that has lead to climate change across the planet. And what’s happening here in the U.S. isn’t true for growing countries like India and China, where emissions are growing. Continue Reading →
Utility scams are a common form of fraud and identity theft.
Sometimes it’s a knock on the door, with someone telling you they need to check your electrical wiring. Perhaps you’ve gotten a phone call threatening to cut off your power if you don’t pay your electric bill immediately over the phone by credit card or within a half hour by wire transfer. Or maybe it’s someone on the phone calling to offer to help you pay your electric bill, thanks to a federal program. Most likely all of these are instances of fraud — criminals attempting to extort you or steal your identity.
“Scams are constantly being generated, not just utility scams,” says Jarrod Wise with the Better Business Bureau‘s Austin office. “Scammers will find any kind of way to try to get your personal information,” he says, with the intention of stealing your identity.
Sometimes the scams will use intimidation and fear to defraud consumers, like threatening to cut off your power. Wise says this is a “red flag.” “I mean, you have to say, no one [from a power company] is going to demand to do this right away, no one is going to demand money up front, and your power isn’t going to be turned off. That’s just not going to happen.” Continue Reading →
Location of the earthquake that occurred Wednesday morning.
Another minor earthquake close to the Barnett Shale rumbled through north Texas this week.
The quake occurred at around 8:30 Wednesday morning about one mile west of Ovilla, Texas. Ovilla partially lies in both Dallas and Ellis counties, about 20 miles south of Dallas.
The Ovilla earthquake’s magnitude registered as a 2.4 on the Richter scale. Although the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that an earthquake with a magnitude of less than 3.5 isn’t typically noticeable, at least three people reported feeling the quake to the USGS web site.
Ovilla Fire Department Captain Brandon Kennedy said that he didn’t feel the earthquake, nor did he receive any calls about it. According to Kennedy, it was the first earthquake he’d even heard of in his hometown.
“I’ve never known of [an earthquake] since I’ve lived in Ovilla,” Kennedy said.
Bruce Bar is a certified floodplain manger and caretaker of his neighborhood dam in Bastrop County.
This is part four of a series looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one here, and part two here, and part three here.
In a peaceful, wooded corner of Bastrop County, Texas sits one of the unluckiest dams in the state. In 2011 the Labor Day Wildfires burned soil and vegetation around Clear Springs Lake and its earthen dam. Then, half a year later, a massive rainstorm hit. Water poured over the structure and wrecked havoc on an already crumbling spillway.
“Our poor little dam has gone between being scorched to being flooded in a matter of six months,” Bruce Bar, a floodplain engineer and the manager of the community’s dam told StateImpact Texas. “So it’s handled about as much as nature can throw at it.”
In his role as manager of the dam, Bar has been looking to raise money for repairs.
“We had a homeowners association meeting and some people got rankled because they didn’t even know that we had a dam, and they had been here for ten or twelve years or so,” he said. “If all of a sudden if they start getting a bill saying they’re due so many thousands of dollars. I think that’s… that could be a problem.”
Aging and lack of maintenance are effecting both private and public dams in the state, but so is an absence of money says Warren Samuelson, the Manager of the Dam Safety Program for the TCEQ.
Crew installing geothermal power generator at well site near Laurel, Mississippi.
There are thousands of oil & gas wells in Texas that tap into the earth’s supply of hot water, some of it a boiling hot 250 F. There are modern, high tech steam engines that could use the water to make electricity. There was a federally-funded experimental power plant that proved the technology could work in Texas.
“They made (the power plant) work, they proved it was successful, and then they dismantled it because they didn’t have funding to keep the project going,” said Maria Richards, a researcher at Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Laboratory. Continue Reading →
Texas has more dams than any other state in the country. This is a map of Texas dams from the USACE.
This is part three of a series looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one here, and part two here.
In 1978 a massive storm hit the West Texas town of Albany. It dumped 23 inches of rain in just eight hours. Waters caused 9 deaths, flooded hundreds of homes, and broke through a local dam. Troy Henderson, who now works on the Brownwood Texas Lake Patrol, says since then he’s followed a simple rule.
“If I were to build a home somewhere, I’d make sure that if it was downstream from a lake that their dam is property maintained,” he told StateImpact Texas, “and the reason I say that is, I lived in Albany in 1978.”
The Federal Government echoes that advice. In the FEMA booklet “Living with Dams,” the agency urges people to “ask questions” about the condition and hazard rating of dams near their homes.
But here in Texas, no one needs to answer those questions.
A photo of a rusted out pipe taken during a TCEQ inspection of a dam. This picture is now used in dam safety workshops presented by TCEQ.
This is part two of a series devoted to looking at the infrastructure of dams in Texas, and what can be done to improve it. You can find part one hereand part threehere.
In 2008, the Texas State Auditor’s office released the kind of report that keeps public officials awake at night. It found that state regulators were not ensuring the proper maintenance of thousands of dams in Texas. The audit found that state inspectors had never visited hundreds of dams that could cause loss of life if they failed.
The Dam Safety Program with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is in charge of inspecting the state’s dams. Warren Samuelson, the program’s manager, says that his department has added staff and made progress since that audit was issued.
“At the end of 2011 we had all of them… except a handful that we couldn’t get into. We were able to look at all of these high and significant hazard dams,” Samuelson told StateImpact Texas.
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