Utilities Sector

TXU, The Buyout and the Power of "Greenmail"

TXU Is All Coal-Fired-Up Over "Stop TXU" Ads. Surprising Much? Didn't Think So.

Parts Per Billion and Other Things You Really Oughta Care About If You Breathe

Canary in a Coal Mine

A Trashy Tale

How Vonciel Jones Hill Will Spend Valentine's Day

Laura Miller Ain't No One's Publicist

Because Four Units Are Better Than Two

Podesta's Peeps Suggest Ways to Fix Dallas's "Dangerous Chemical Facilities"

The loading dock at Petra Chemical's Dallas facility on Storey Lane Only yesterday, Politico.com suggested that the think tank Center for American Progress would become a major player within Barack Obama's White House. After all, it was founded and is headed by former Clinton chief of staff and c ... More >>

FBI probes bribery allegations in Ferris

The loading dock at Petra Chemical's Dallas facility on Storey Lane Only yesterday, Politico.com suggested that the think tank Center for American Progress would become a major player within Barack Obama's White House. After all, it was founded and is headed by former Clinton chief of staff and c ... More >>

The Trashing of Ferris, Texas

When a giant came to a tiny town, it soon became clear that almost everyone has a price.

Letters

When a giant came to a tiny town, it soon became clear that almost everyone has a price.

Talking trash

Ferris' landfill stays in limbo--while state regulators fight among themselves

Trashed

State examiner recommends rejection of Ferris' controversial landfill-expansion permit

Death on tap

Cryptosporidium kills AIDS victims in Dallas. Who will the pathogen claim next?

Getting dumped

Despite shoddy science, bad economics, and catastrophic health risks, a West Texas border community may become the nation's nuclear dumping ground

Re-volting

Want cheaper electricity? Get out your calculator and call a lawyer.

Garbage by Numbers

City's recycling rate takes a dive

The T. Boone Pickens Alternative Energy Show Rolls Across America

City's recycling rate takes a dive

Shocking

City's recycling rate takes a dive

Eeek, the Facts!

The city council fears mice in corners whispering truth

Cash for Trash

The city's new recycling center is up and running, sort of

Trashy Questions

City auditors take a belated look at Dallas' recycling program

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Why Dallas' recycling program is a $17 million joke

Power Sharks

Texas consumer advocates worry that deregulation will spawn new ways to prey on the poor

Feline Love

Texas consumer advocates worry that deregulation will spawn new ways to prey on the poor

You Are Aware the City Council Is Likely to Increase Your Atmos Energy Bill, Right?

​Just when the budget process couldn't get more interesting ...Yesterday we noted that some on the council, and City Manager Mary Suhm, have pointed out that at the end of the year, the city's franchise fee contract with Atmos Energy is set to expire. Suhm notes, on Page 24 of today's budget amend ... More >>

Liveblogging the Council Briefing During Which They're Discussing Hiking Your Water Bill

If you've never met the director of Dallas Water Utilities, here she is: Jody Puckett​Walked into today's city council briefing a couple minutes late to catch Tennell Atkins talking about how Dallas needs "classy," and then they gave a long and lengthily introduced award to Wal-Mart wherein everyb ... More >>

Less Than Two Years After Redo Began on White Rock Lake Spillway, an Official Dedication

​As you no doubt recall, the rains of March '06 wreaked havoc upon the White Rock Lake Spillway -- retaining walls collapsed, and huge hunks of land were swallowed by the storms. Which is why, in August '08, the city council agreed to spend $16,748,070 to not only repair the damage, but upgrade th ... More >>

How a Projected Increase in Solid Waste Disposal Will (Kinda) Save Rec Centers

​This afternoon, City Hall spokesman Frank Librio forwarded a memo City Manager Mary Suhm sent to Mayor Tom Leppert and the council last night, in which Suhm broke some news: She found an extra $1.8 million with which to fund the city's rec centers, whose hours she's proposing to drastically cut i ... 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 >>

Nothing Rapid About DART in Ice and Snow

​Check me on this. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, the outfit that runs the trains, didn't know how to keep their trains running in an ice storm. The same kind of trains operate in winter weather cities all over the world. There's a way to keep them running in an ice storm. But DART didn't know how. L ... More >>

Solid Waste-rs Tell Caraway They Really Don't Want to Be Told Where to Dump Trash

​Last June, we took a look at some moneymaking brainstorms Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm presented to the city council, which Suhm hoped would offset some of the $131-million budget shortfall with which she was faced at the time. Among them was one in particular that didn't get very far, or so it ... More >>

Talking Trash With the City Manager As She Looks At Ways to Generate Additional Revenue

​In a few weeks, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will present to the city council some revenue-generating brainstorms she hopes could offset some of this year's $60-million-and-maybe-more budget shortfall. Among her proposals, she tells Unfair Park, will be one familiar to anyone paying attention la ... More >>

Before the Council Talks Trash This Morning ...

​No doubt most of you aren't all that concerned where your garbage gets dumped, so long as it's picked up and hauled off on time. That said, the subject's slowly but surely becoming a hot topic at City Hall, as City Manager Mary Suhm and Sanitation Services Director Mary Nix make their solid-waste ... More >>

Talking Trash with Mary Suhm, Because You Have Not Heard the Last of Flow Control

​Last we looked, the council tabled till after its summer vacation a proposal from Marys Suhm and Nix to force all the solid-waste haulers in the city to dump their trash at the McCommas Bluff Landfill rather than one of the dozen other sites in the region. The city manager and head of Sanitatio ... More >>

Talking With the Trashman About Flowetry: Solid Waste Haulers Make New Pitch to City

​First, let me apologize for the headline -- I was listening to Billy Bragg and friends on the way into work this morning, and it could not be helped. Now, then. It's been a whole two days since last we discussed flow control -- I know, right? -- which, as you're well aware, involves the city forc ... More >>

Your Water Bill's Going Up This Year. And the Year After That. And the ... Well, You Get It.

Click to embiggen ... or just go to Page 29 in this budget briefing.​I mention this in the comments below, but the 5.91 percent increase in our Dallas Water Utilities bill comin' this fall won't be the last one any time soon. Matter of fact, per this morning's council briefing, this is but the fir ... More >>

"Sounds Too Good to Be True": WFAA Sifts Through a Few Issues With Flow Control

Tennell Atkins tours a California "resource recovery" plant​The council may or may not vote on that ordinance involving the redirecting and recycling of solid waste today. It all depends where flow control falls on the action-packed agenda, which includes passing the budget (that should go smoothl ... More >>

Poster of the Week: Beirut at the Prophet Bar on November 1

​ There are three very specific reasons why this poster designed by former DC9 contributor Lance Lester works so well. And they are? location, location, location.

University of Texas Fracking Study: No Evidence That It Contaminates Groundwater

​The University of Texas released the preliminary results today of that comprehensive study on the controversial natural gas producing process known as hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), drawing no link between it and claims of groundwater contamination. "While there have been casing/cement ... More >>

Waste Management Association Sues City Over "Anti-Free Enterprise" Flow Control Ordinance

​Saw this one coming; so too did the city council. After all, in mid-September the council met behind closed doors with city attorneys to review "legal issues regarding proposed resource flow control ordinance" -- which, as I am sure you recall, is the ordinance directing all solid waste collecte ... More >>

New Report Says That Texas May Struggle To Meet Peak Electric Demand By 2013

Via.​Get ready for more rolling blackouts, because according to a grid reliability report, Texas won't have the juice to meet peak demands by 2013. The study, authored by grid reliability enforcer North American Electric Reliability Corporation, says Texas operators may either bring old plant ... More >>

Next Week, Federal Judge to (Temporarily) Decide Fate of City's Flow Control Ordinance

Photo by Danny Hurley​Tomorrow, the Dallas City Council will go behind closed doors to meet with city attorneys about a host of legal issues staring down City Hall, among them: a long-going federal wrongful arrest suit about to get even more expensive (council will vote next week to pay Brown & ... More >>

Why is Drought-Hit Dallas Selling Water?

Um ... because someone at City Hall is smart. Dang.

We Checked and, Yup, Dallas's Flow Control Plan Is Still All About the Benjamins

Photo by Danny HurleyPaul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell, left, at last fall's anti-flow control protest in front of Dallas City Hall​Back in September, when the city passed its ordinance requiring commercial solid waste companies to dump in South Dallas's McCommas Bluff landfill, the ... 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 >>

Shippin' Shale: Energy Independence Means Exporting It So We Can Import It. Got That?

​Yeah, it doesn't make sense to us either. A couple of weeks ago we asked if America could stop pretending that politicians and their benefactors in the energy industry actually give two shits about "energy independence" or "energy security," or any of the other portent-laden, focus-grouped ca ... More >>

So Much For Flow Control. For Now, At Least, as Federal Judge Dumps Waste Control Ordinance.

​It's been a couple of weeks since lawyers hired by the city and the National Solid Waste Management Association squared off in U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor's over the flow control ordinance that would have dumped all the city's solid waste at the McCommas Bluff Landfill. I say "would have" b ... More >>

Keeping the Lights On In Texas is Really Starting to Scare State Lawmakers

​We watch a three-hour House State Affairs Committee hearing so you don't have to! Seriously, though, the future reliability of the Texas electrical grid is really starting to freak state legislators the fuck out. The watchword these days is "resource adequacy" -- bureaucrat-ese for "Remember ... More >>