You may have seen the TED talk, or read the book, or just seen an interview with him somewhere like CNN or the Daily Show. He’s William Kamkwamaba, a young man from Malawi, who dropped out of school at a young age and built his family a windmill. From junk. And it worked.
In the early 2000s, Malawi was suffering through a crippling drought, which led to the worst famine in its history. The Malawis primarily grow maize, and as their crops withered, people starved. William’s solution was to build a windmill to pump water. Then he built another. His family’s crops were able to grow despite the drought, and soon his story became a well-known TED talk. That’s when entrepreneur Tom Rielly heard his story and thought, ‘This kid needs a chance.’
So Rielly took William under his wing, and got him back into school (a prestigious magnet school in South Africa), and eventually college. A book (which became a bestseller) and a film deal also came together.
A new film premiering at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin this week, ‘William and the Windmill,’ tells the story of what it was like for William to have his story told. In other words, it looks at what life is like when you’re simple village teenager who all of the sudden becomes an energy icon. It also asks important questions about international aid and development. Continue Reading →
Photo Illustration by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A bill to provide major funding for new water projects in Texas moved one step closer to becoming a reality today.
Significant new funding for water projects in a dry, thirsty Texas moved one step closer to becoming a reality today. The bill, HB 4, would take money from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to start a loan program for new water projects. It passed unanimously in a committee, and now it heads to the House floor for a vote. (From there? Well, it’s probably a good time to brush up on how a bill becomes a law, or just watch the classic video.)
The bill’s latest version (which isn’t available online yet) that passed today is much more detailed, going from eight pages to 31, and puts added focus on conservation. As before, 20 percent of the funding would go towards conservation projects. But it also includes conservation as a factor for water supply projects that want funding from the new program. “There was a lot of detail added to this bill,” Laura Huffman, Texas State Director of the Nature Conservancy, tells StateImpact Texas. “They’ve put in place a prioritization scheme that would ask utilities and the state agency to prioritize those projects that have good conservation plans that are implemented. Not just talked about, but implemented.”
Huffman also applauded a stipulation that utilities with good conservation programs would get premium interest rates for loans from the water bank. “That would include things like low per capita water use, low water losses,” she says. “Those kind of indicators that show a utility is really functioning at the highest level.”
When supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline said it would bring jobs to Texas, they probably weren’t talking about jobs for lawyers.
That’s just kind of how it worked out.
As property owners challenge the company’s use of eminent domain, the project to bring crude from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf sparked litigation all down the line. One of those property owners is Julia Trigg Crawford. She’s a farmer from North Texas who says it was too easy for the company to take her land.
Photo by Terrence Henry
Julia Trigg Crawford has been in an extended legal battle with the TransCanada pipeline company.
“The way TransCanada got to that stage is, they went to the Railroad Commission [which regulates drilling and pipelines in the state], they got the T4 form,” Crawford told StateImpact Texas, “and when they got to the box that asked if you’re a common carrier or a private carrier they checked the common carrier box.”
To be a “common carrier” means that the pipeline can be hired out by whatever entity can afford to use it, kind of like a toll road. To claim common carrier status gives the company the right to take land under state law. But in 2011, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that pipeline builders need to do more than check a box to get that power. Now, three bills at the state capital aim to overhaul the system.
Texas’ water code was written well before the spread of fracking. As a result, some groundwater authorities require companies using water for fracking to obtain a permit, while others do not.
In Karnes County, at the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale, oil and gas drillers seeking to use water for hydraulic fracturing must get a permit from the local groundwater authority. They can pump only a certain amount of water, and they must report how much they use.
In Dimmit County, another Eagle Ford Shale drilling hotbed, drillers can pump as much water as they want — and no permit is required.
This tale of two counties reflects the ambiguity in state rules regarding groundwater for fracking. Texas’ water code was written well before the spread of fracking, which involves sending millions of gallons of water (along with sand and chemicals) down a well to rupture hard rock that contains oil or gas. As a result, some groundwater authorities require companies using water for fracking to obtain a permit, while others do not. Continue Reading →
Whooping Cranes return to Aransas for Winter 2009.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is tasked with safeguarding the state’s natural resources, but this week a federal judge found the Agency responsible for the deaths of 23 rare whooping cranes.
The TCEQ’s management of water flows into the Guadalupe River lead to the deaths by not allowing enough freshwater into the river, raising its levels of salinity, according to U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack.
Judge Jack found that the Agency’s actions are a violation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Her order mandates that the TCEQ create a habitat conservation plan for the cranes and bars the state from issuing any new water permits on the rivers without federal oversight.
But the ruling may influence water management in Texas well beyond the Guadalupe River. Continue Reading →
A group of retirees from NASA who once put a man on the moon and call their group The Right Climate Stuff “shouldn’t be taken seriously” according to an article in The Guardian, a British newspaper.
Dave Fehling / StateImpact
Dr. Harold Doiron worked on NASA's Apollo project
One of the most vocal of the bunch, Harold Doiron, was taunted at a debate held at the National Press Club in Washington DC this past January.
“Do you believe in global warming? Do you believe there’s global warming,” asked moderator Blanquita Cullum. This came after other panelists assured the audience that virtually all peer-reviewed scientific studies support that humans cause climate change and that to argue otherwise “is like debating whether cigarettes cause cancer.” Continue Reading →
Photo from Nan Palmero via Flikr http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanpalmero
Lawmakers are trying to figure out how to find money for a water plan that some say is not enough.
Bills aimed at funding the State Water Plan rolled into two subcommittees today in the State House and Senate. Lawmakers discussed taking $2 billion from the rainy day fund and giving it to the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) to fund local water projects. They also heard support for the plan from diverse groups from around the state.
Testimonies supporting both bills came from environmental activists and business leaders. Kyle Mayor Lucy Johnson spoke in favor of the bill to the House Appropriations subcommittee on Budget Transparency and Reform.
Johnson says her city paired with Buda and San Marcos in a local water plan to ensure that the cities would have enough water. She says the plan would provide insurance for her growing community.
The golf course at Houston's River Oaks Country Club
Certain tax exemptions will cost Texas $43.9 billion in 2013, according to a new report from the Texas Comptroller.
Two state senators say it’s time to start reviewing those tax breaks.
“We have no earthly idea what they are, what they cost, who benefits from them,” Sen. Rodney Ellis told StateImpact.
Ellis, a Democrat from Houston, and John Carona, a Republican senator from Dallas, have filed a bill that would require such tax breaks be reviewed periodically to prove they continue to make fiscal sense. For example, breaks for drilling operations enacted years ago to encourage the new and costly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing continue to drain money from state coffers for a method that today is neither new nor relatively as costly.
As the state looks to fund water projects, concerns are being raised that not enough conservation is being encouraged.
Within days of the announcement earlier this year that the state legislature could get serious about funding new water projects in Texas, folks started having questions. Where will that money go? Why not make more of the water we have instead of building more reservoirs? And what’s to prevent the proposed $2 billion ‘water bank’ from suffering the same problems and controversies as other state funds have?
Texas faces the conundrum of a rapidly growing population, with increased water demands, in the face of falling water supplies and hotter, drier weather. How to ensure the state has enough water going forward has been one of the key issues this legislative session.
Environmental groups looked at the list this week and quickly became concerned that it emphasized building new water supplies over conservation. Continue Reading →
Original Story, March 8, 2013:Â “Local control” is a term you hear a lot of from Texas elected officials. That’s no surprise in a state where lawmakers extoll the benefits of limited central government and bottom-up policy making. But, according to some, there are also times when local regulations can become confusing and cumbersome. Specifically, when they pertain to regulating oil and gas drilling.
“Tarrant county is a great example,” State Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) said at a recent panel discussion on the oil and gas boom hosted by StateImpact Texas. “[It has] 34 municipalities within the county each one has different laws regarding drilling. In fact, there’s one community that’s completely outlawed any drilling.”
A bill filed this legislative session by State Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, would not take away the right of local jurisdictions to pass those restrictions, but it may make them much more difficult to accomplish. Continue Reading →
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