It remains to be seen how recent state supreme court decisions about property rights will be handled in the Texas legislature.
Today in a Beaumont courthouse, Jefferson County Judge Tom Rugg will hear yet another case concerning the Keystone XL pipeline. As we’ve reported, the Canadian company TransCanada has visited a few Texas courthouses lately. Always at issue is whether it can take private property in Texas to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
And Judge Rugg expects we’ll see more pipeline companies visiting more Texas courthouses in the future.
By all estimations, the Denbury Green ruling on eminent domain by the Texas Supreme Court means nobody is quite sure where private property rights end, and a company’s right to take property begins.
“It’s opened up a real can of worms and I’m not sure how it’s gonna get resolved,” Judge Rugg tells StateImpact Texas.
But that doesn’t mean state lawmakers won’t try in the coming legislative session.
The Texas Attorney General says that $TK million in lawsuits against the Obama administration has been a "bargain" for Texans.
Despite a mixed record of suing the Obama administration (five wins, eight losses, and two dismissals as of last count), Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says today that all these lawsuits are a “bargain” for Texans.
In an op-ed published in the Dallas Morning Newsand emailed to reporters, Abbott says that one recent victory against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “saved more than 500 jobs and protected Texans’ access to reliable electricity — which was jeopardized by the EPA’s draconian regulations.”
But it wasn’t clear which recent case he was referring to. Or where that 500 jobs figure came from.
So we called up Abbott’s press office to ask which case it was.
Charles Castillo picked up the phone. “Do you really think your listeners are going to care which case?” he said, laughing.
Well, yes, we do. It turns out Abbott is referring to the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, which aims to reduce pollution — mostly from coal power plants — across state lines. A federal appeals court vacated that rule in August, sending it back to the EPA. It could be revised within a year.
The Texas Animal Health Commission is changing the way it tests for a trichomoniasis.
They don’t prepare you for this kind of story in journalism school, but here goes:
Texas cattle have an STD problem.
This month the Texas Animal Health Commission announced new regulations on how to test for a venereal disease among cattle called Tricomoniasis. Dr. Dee Ellis, Executive Director of the Commission, and Texas State Veterinarian estimates that between two to five percent of Texas cattle are infected by the disease.
Before you spit out that hamburger, a couple of disclaimers:
1) The disease doesn’t impact humans. It’s only spread between cattle when they mate (nearly all are still bred the old-fashioned way in Texas, not through artificial insemination).
2) Texas is actually further ahead in testing for the disease than some other parts of the world.  The state requires all cattle imported into the state to be tested. Canada and Mexico, for example, don’t test for the disease.
Jefferson County Court at Law Judge Tom Rugg listens to arguments in the property rights case earlier this month.
Another court case appears to be breaking in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will take heavy crude harvested in Canadian sand pits to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
On Tuesday, Judge Tom Rugg of Jefferson County Court at Law 1 indicated that he believes TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the pipeline, has the right to begin building the Keystone XL on private land near Beaumont, Texas. Houston brothers David and James Holland own the land. They lease some 4,000 acres out for rice farming and ranching under a group called Texas Rice Land Partners. There are already dozens of pipelines on their land, but they feel TransCanada low-balled them with their offer to build the pipeline across it. The company is trying to use eminent domain to go ahead and build it anyways.
But they can’t take the land just yet. The writ of possession — the ruling that would give TransCanada the right to seize the land — hasn’t been issued. That will likely come down in a hearing Friday, according to the Judge.
“If the bond issues are sorted out, I believe under the law that the pipeline is allowed a writ of possession,” Judge Rugg tells StateImpact Texas. (Reading Judge Rugg’s ruling will make your head hurt. And he sympathizes with that. “It is such a complex thing that we’re dealing with that I just didn’t know how to make it simpler,” the judge says.)
Those bond issues that will be addressed Friday deal with how much TransCanada needs to put up in a bond. That’s a payment that TransCanada sets aside in case they ultimately lose their court battle against the landowners to cover damage from construction of the pipeline. Right now that bond is set at $5,000. And the landowners feel that isn’t enough.
‘Here’s Where it Gets Troublesome’
There’s a lot of uncharted water here in challenging the bond amount, according to Judge Rugg. “Here’s where it gets a little troublesome,” Judge Rugg says. “This is an area that has almost never been litigated in the history of condemnation litigation in the state.” And that’s just the beginning. Continue Reading →
Over 300 million forested trees have been lost to the Texas drought.
The tally of the Texas drought‘s toll continues. After an extensive survey, the Texas A&M Forest Service today puts the number of rural trees killed by the Texas drought at 301 million. That falls right in the middle of a December 2011 estimate by the service that between 100 and 500 million trees had been killed by the drought.
The survey only applies to trees in rural forest areas. The number of trees in urban settings that were lost to the drought was pegged at over five million earlier this year.
A&M Forest Service conducted the study by using on-the-ground research as well as satellite imagery. It includes not just trees that were directly killed by the drought, but also trees that died because they became more susceptible to disease or infestation because of stress from the drought.
The Texas A&M Forest Service says that there is some good news here, though. Continue Reading →
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) named twelve new National Superfund sites in the country, with two of them in our very own Lone Star State. Superfund sites are polluted locations designated by the EPA as hazardous. The designation allows for the federal government to overhaul clean-up of the toxic sites and find parties financially liable for the contamination.
A Pasadena watershed and a well water site outside Forth Worth were both added to the “National Priorities” list, a distinction the EPA makes to say they intend to investigate the site even further. Just five percent of sites initially investigated by the EPA are added to the National Priorities List. Texas is home to 50 of the 1,315 National Priority sites. So where are these sites, and what happened there? Let’s take a look.
The City of Houston produced this video showing how to spot a terrorist
(Updated October 5, 2012) As part of his work as a community organizer for environmental causes, Juan Parras takes photos of refineries and petrochemical plants near the Houston Ship Channel. Sometimes, he says he’s made to feel like a criminal for doing it.Â
“It’s making it seem like you’re committing a crime by taking a picture. And when we get to the point where we can’t take pictures of facilities because they feel threatened, then I think we’re crossing the line,” Parras tells StateImpact Texas.
Parras guesses he’s been stopped and questioned by police outside the big plants no less than ten times since 9/11.
Photo courtesy of DiveOfficer: www.flickr.com/photos/diveofficer/
If some climate change models are correct, vampire bats might some day move in to Texas.
Halloween is more than a month away, but we’re already hearing about vampires.
Last week, reports that vampire bats bit a man in Central Texas sent shivers down more than a few spines. The attack, as first reported by KSAT in San Antonio, allegedly took place during a hunting trip in Johnson City. The man said he and his friends were set upon in their sleep by the creatures, that bite their prey and then lick the blood from the wounds.
And what reporter can resist a good vampire bat story?
I know I can’t.
So, smelling blood, I started making some phone calls. The man who said he was bitten did not return requests for comment, but I did hear from Ron Van Den Bussche.
He’s a professor of zoology at Oklahoma State University, and what he told me punched some holes in the story.
“My first reaction is … they’re not vampire bats. It’s a hoax,” Van Den Bussche said.
Ron Curry has been appointed as the new regional administrator of the EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has appointed Ron Curry, a former New Mexico Environment Department official, as the new regional administrator of Region Six of the EPA. That area covers Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico.
In an email to StateImpact Texas, a spokesperson for Region Six of the EPA says that “will provide valuable insight into the public health and environmental challenges facing Region Six, and will be able to offer a state’s perspective within the Agency.”
Curry served as Cabinet Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department from January 2003 thru December 2010.
Disclosure: KUT Austin, the lead station of StateImpact Texas, is a sponsor of the Texas Tribune Festival.Â
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