Sierra Club

Re: Sam Coats' Concrete Problem

Cancer Happens (Or: You Could Be Next)

What Pickens is Pickin'

On the Road Again, Leppert Stumbles

$ucker$

Forget Brooklyn -- Dallas' own Trinity River boosters aim to con you out of tax dollars for seven silly bridges

Take a Deep Breath, Dallas. You Too, Fort Worth. No, Really.

Forget Brooklyn -- Dallas' own Trinity River boosters aim to con you out of tax dollars for seven silly bridges

Events for the week

Forget Brooklyn -- Dallas' own Trinity River boosters aim to con you out of tax dollars for seven silly bridges

PCB or TYA: Those Hudson River Carcinogens Are Finally Rolling Into Texas

Back in February, Alexa wrote about the pending transport of Hudson River sludge to West Texas, where Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons's Waste Control Specialists will turn one state's trash into one man's treasure. That trash in question are millions of cubic yards of PCBs -- or polychlorinated bi ... More >>

Ill Wind Blowing

Texas Industries wants permission to burn 270,000 tons of hazardous waste each year at a concrete plant 30 miles from Dallas. That would make it the nation's largest incinerator of toxic waste. Despite stunning ignorance about what this will do to your he

Something In The Air

Downwind of TXI's Midlothian cement plant, people and animals keep getting sick. Instead of investigating whether the plant is to blame, state regulators appear ready to let TXI burn even more hazardous waste. Part two of A Dallas Observer Special Report

Letters

Downwind of TXI's Midlothian cement plant, people and animals keep getting sick. Instead of investigating whether the plant is to blame, state regulators appear ready to let TXI burn even more hazardous waste. Part two of A Dallas Observer Special Report

Letters

Downwind of TXI's Midlothian cement plant, people and animals keep getting sick. Instead of investigating whether the plant is to blame, state regulators appear ready to let TXI burn even more hazardous waste. Part two of A Dallas Observer Special Report

Girding for battle

Downwind of TXI's Midlothian cement plant, people and animals keep getting sick. Instead of investigating whether the plant is to blame, state regulators appear ready to let TXI burn even more hazardous waste. Part two of A Dallas Observer Special Report

Out in West Texas, Harold Simmons Is Burying Hudson River Carcinogens

Ever wondered what's at the bottom of New York's Hudson River? Andrews, a small West Texas town 350 miles west of Dallas, is about to find out.Last month, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved an application to allow the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in a site just outside ... More >>

Letters

Those magic bridges; Baby Buddha; Duh; The happy snob

Letters

Judging Joe Kendall; Elian's kidnapping; Clearing the air; Chaos on Lower Greenville

Dumped on

Mistrust fuels McKinney's fight against plans for a landfill

The T. Boone Pickens Alternative Energy Show Rolls Across America

Mistrust fuels McKinney's fight against plans for a landfill

Clearing the Air

Former County Judge Margaret Keliher keeps trying to blow away the smoke over pollution plans

Choke On It

North Texas gets schooled on the nasty politics of dirty air

Corndoggle

Dallas Is Banking On Ethanol, But Is It The Fuel Of The Future Or A Barrel Of Pork?

Belly up

Bass kills and lesions on fish worry Sam Rayburn anglers. So des the state's plan to lower the lake's pollution standards.

Go West

With Dallas Democrats' return from the dead, state Senator Royce West is poised for bigger things, like maybe paychecks

Shark Bites

JAWS Unleashed is as sloppy as it is gory

Various Artists

Future Soundtrack for America (Barsuk Records)

What's the Catch?

This new Trinity River plan is suspiciously reasonable

Green Giant

Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug is credited with saving the lives of 1 billion people. So why is a small cadre of activists bent on tarnishing his legacy?

Muddy Waters

Mayor Miller rafts down the Trinity in search of truth

Down by the Old Mill

A band of East Texas environmentalists takes on a polluting paper plant and proves that might doesn't always make right, even in a company town

Desert Blooms

Jetports and elite resorts may do what border bandits and blistering heat couldn't: rob Big Bend of its rugged beauty

Rich Man, Poor Man

Dallas architect Tom Stanley crafted buildings that endure on city skylines across the country, but his fortune and family wouldn't survive their own shaky foundations

Mean Green

What do you get when you cross the Zapatistas with Dr. Dolittle? The Animal Liberation Front

Whizzing inside the tent

ExxonMobil shareholders use their stock to push a corporate giant toward change

Clearing the air

The motive behind a series of Bush attack ads may have been business, not politics

Bay botch

Oysterman Joe Nelson says pollution is slowly killing Galveston Bay. Is anyone listening?

Is the City of Dallas Really Going Green, Or Just Talking Till It's Blue in the Face?

The city of Dallas has made much of its efforts to "build a greener city" ... which means what, exactly? That, more or less, was the question posed earlier this week during a confab at the downtown Dallas library during a program billed as a dialogue on the "green economy," a catchphrase that's beco ... More >>

Jim Schutze Joins The Urban Explorers Who, Amid The Poisonous Snakes, Bacteria And Quicksand Of The Trinity River, Seek To Reconnect The City To Its Natural Beauty.

The city of Dallas has made much of its efforts to "build a greener city" ... which means what, exactly? That, more or less, was the question posed earlier this week during a confab at the downtown Dallas library during a program billed as a dialogue on the "green economy," a catchphrase that's beco ... More >>

Did Joe Barton Have a Point?

The city of Dallas has made much of its efforts to "build a greener city" ... which means what, exactly? That, more or less, was the question posed earlier this week during a confab at the downtown Dallas library during a program billed as a dialogue on the "green economy," a catchphrase that's beco ... More >>

Got Something to Say About Coal Ash Pollution? The EPA Wants to Hear From You Today.

Lower Colorado River AuthorityA new Sierra Club report says coal ash from Central Texas' Fayette Power Plant is polluting the groundwater nearby.​One month since the EPA's stolid road warriors blew threw Arlington to get your thoughts on pollution from gas drilling, the agency's making its triumph ... More >>

At Friday's Screening of Gasland, Rallying the Troops to Keep Gas Drilling Out of Dallas

Photos by Patrick MichelsAfter the movie, director Josh Fox, center, stuck around for a Q&A joined by the Sierra Club's Peter Wilson, Dallas drilling activist Raymond Crawford, DISH mayor Calvin Tillman and drilling activist Sharon Wilson.​Gas drilling opponents from around North Texas rallied ... More >>

After Proposing Land Swap, State to Pay Dallas Homebuilder $13 Mil for Devils River Land

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department​A couple of months back we noted that the Texas Park and Wildlife Department had proposed making one hell of a trade with Dallas's Rod Sanders, co-founder of Huntington Home, for some land down in Val Verde County. Sanders, you may recall, owns the 17,638-acre D ... More >>

Downtown Tomorrow, It's an EPA-Sponsored Open Season on Texas's Greenhouse Gas Regs

​If you were all revved up yesterday for a few solid hours of public debate on the environment, only to be abruptly denied, well, take heart -- at the Crowne Plaza Hotel tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency's holding an all-day hearing on its proposals for regulating greenhouse gases. Fro ... More >>

Former NY State Comptroller Makes Case For Retiring Three of Luminant's Coal-Fired Plants

Big Brown​Former New York State First Deputy Comptroller-turned-investment banker Tom Sanzillo released a report this morning, via the Sierra Club, demanding that Dallas-based Energy Future Holding (and its Luminant subsidiary) shutter three of its coal-fired power plants: Big Brown (in Fairfield) ... More >>

Activists Hail Dallas County Commissioners Court For Demanding State, Feds Clear the Air

​Anti-gas drilling activist Raymond Crawford sends word this morning: Moments ago the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to adopt a resolution demanding the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency do something about cleaning up Dallas's air. Long ... More >>

Harold Simmons One Step Closer to Getting What He Wants: Everyone's Nuclear Waste

Annette and Harold Simmons​At the end of last year we spent quite a bit of time following Nuke Free Texas's efforts to stop  Governor Rick Perry's appointees on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission from giving Waste Control Specialists the thumbs-up to bury nuclea ... More >>

Gas Drilling Activists Not Happy With Council Component of Task Force Caraway's Assembled

Photo by Patrick MichelsRay Crawford and his petition signed by those opposed to gas drilling in the Dallas city limuts​As we noted a couple of weeks back, Dallas City Hall's taking applications for the gas-drilling task force Angela Hunt demanded after Dave Neumann failed to make good on his prom ... More >>

A Few Council Members Take in Gasland, But Not Before Mayor Mike Makes a Promise to City

Photos by Leslie MinoraAngela Hunt was asked whether it's likely Dallas will be sued by gas drillers awaiting their SUPs.​Mayor Mike Rawlings took the mic before last night's Observer co-sponsored Gasland screening and told the audience of council members, activists and concerned locals, "I wi ... More >>

Enviro Groups Prepare To Sue Luminant's Northeast Texas Power Plants Over Air Pollution

Big Brown​The Sierra Club gave Luminant Generation Company, downtown-based and one of Texas's biggest power suppliers, notice Thursday that it plans to sue them for thousands of alleged violations of the Clean Air Act at two of its coal-fired power plants in northeast Texas. According to envi ... More >>

Dallas-Fort Worth's Air Could Be Cleanest Ever By Next Summer. He Said Sarcastically.

Sierra Club​It was early November when watchdog group Downwinders At Risk found out that Dallas-Fort Worth had set off air-quality monitors more times than Houston in 2011. Yep, America's petrochemical hub violated EPA standards less often than we did. Depressing, right? As you may recall, th ... More >>

Suit Alleges Texas Issued Luminant Unlimited License to Pollute Without Public Notice

Big Brown​This little nugget slipped past us last week -- somehow, it didn't make headlines north of Austin -- but it draws the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality into a legal tussle with the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project over pollution permits it issued to Dallas- ... More >>