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Blogs
May 1, 2012
Get Ready To Conserve Electricity. ERCOT's Forecast Says This Summer Could Be Rough
Heads up, guys. Remember last summer? It was so damned hot Texans were horse-whipping their thermostats. We came this close to rolling blackouts. So close we're pretty sure Public Utility commish Ken Anderson lost some years off of his life, or at least a little hair. We'd like to tell you this summ ... More >>
Blogs
April 13, 2012
Public Utility Commish Says We Don't Need To Make It Rain Cash To Keep the Lights On
Regulators are absolutely desperate to keep us away from that white-knuckle precipice of rolling blackouts we so perilously toed last summer. And they're willing to try anything to entice electric generators to build more power plants and bring existing plants out of mothballs in the meantime. The ... More >>
Blogs
March 26, 2012
GAO: Shale-Gas States Have No Idea Where Natural Gas Gathering Pipelines Are
Speaking of urban drilling and gas releases in populated areas like Mansfield, the Government Accountability Office says the gathering pipelines used to collect natural gas from drill sites are unregulated, and their locations are often unknown. The GAO conducted site visits in, among other places, ... More >>
Blogs
March 26, 2012
Economides: Texas Lost $7.7 Billion By Not Using Natural Gas To Keep Lights On
Dr. Michael Economides, author, CNBC regular and University of Houston professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, says Texas lost out on some $7.7 billion between 2005 and 2011 primarily because we didn't use natural gas for electricity. Economides, it should be noted, is a vocal industry ... More >>
Blogs
March 15, 2012
PBS' 'Inside E Street' Takes On the Broken Promises of Electric Deregulation in Texas
Some 10 years ago, commodities and energy company Enron led a successful lobbying effort to deregulate Texas electricity markets. A free-market, we were told, would foster competition, keep power prices low and improve customer service. Yet over the last decade, none of these promises have been kept ... More >>
Blogs
March 14, 2012
The Big Electricity Question: How Much Are Dry Nuts Worth?
As Brantley pointed out yesterday, the Texas Public Utility Commission got down to hard numbers last week as it inched further toward what appears to be inevitable -- a huge increase in the current $3,000 per megawatt-hour cap on the price of wholesale electricity during times when demand is high. T ... More >>
Blogs
March 2, 2012
Fracking Boom a Ponzi-Inflated Bubble About To Pop? Rolling Stone Sure Thinks So.
Is the United States the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas?" as President Barack Obama has said. Or has the energy industry used fuzzy math to hype its estimated reserves to entice buyouts and Wall Street investment? Tough to say for sure, but last month the U.S. Energy Information Administration scaled ... More >>
Blogs
February 16, 2012
ERCOT to City Council: Keeping the Lights On Means Sending the Right "Price Signals"
Council member Delia Jasso is officially disturbed by ERCOT's charts, particularly the bar graph showing a big gray empty space between the reserve margin we need to make sure the lights stay on during hot summer afternoons and the colored part that indicates how much generation capacity we'll actua ... More >>
Blogs
February 15, 2012
City Council to Discuss How to Reconcile Developing the City With Conserving Our Water
City Hall's touting the Urban Reserve as an ideal development given our weather and water needs.In one way, shape or form we've noted most of what the city council will discuss this afternoon during its briefing. But there's one briefing we've overlooked: Water Conservation and the Land Developme ... More >>
Blogs
January 31, 2012
Why Is Suhm Asking Council to Extend Watering Restrictions? "Water Sales," In Part.
When Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm first told the council it was time, at long last, to enact twice-a-week watering restrictions, Dallas's six water-supply reservoirs were about 25 percent depleted. But last week's record rainfall, in addition to other recent wet-weather events, have helped fill ... More >>
Blogs
January 23, 2012
Suit Alleges Texas Issued Luminant Unlimited License to Pollute Without Public Notice
Big BrownThis 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 >>
Blogs
January 23, 2012
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 catch phr ... More >>
Blogs
December 21, 2011
Study: In Drought Planning, Water Managers Should Look Further Back Than 1950s
Photo by Brandon ThibodeauxAs we near the end of 2011, let us now look back on the year (without much fondness) and take stock. We racked up one of driest years in recorded history (more on that in a moment). The livestock and agricultural industries took a shuddering blow that, when the fina ... More >>
News
December 8, 2011
Why is Drought-Hit Dallas Selling Water?
Um ... because someone at City Hall is smart. Dang.
Blogs
November 29, 2011
New Report Says That Texas May Struggle To Meet Peak Electric Demand By 2013
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 plants offline a ... More >>
Blogs
November 28, 2011
Irving Needs More of Dallas's Water. And So Does the North Texas Municipal Water District.
Speaking of Dallas's water supply ...I was on US 380 yesterday, headed to Cattleman's Cafe in Blue Ridge for chicken-fried steak, when, driving toward Farmersville, I espied what's left of Lake Lavon, down some 13 feet due to the drought. "It's stunning," in the words of North Texas Municipal Wat ... More >>
Blogs
November 11, 2011
Mary Suhm to Recommend Council Implement Stage 1 Watering Restrictions on December 12
Click to enlarge this chart from the drought update that will be discussed by the Dallas City Council on Wednesday.On November 2, City Manager Mary Suhm told Unfair Park that the city would initiate Stage 1 water restrictions sooner than later; but exactly when, she would not say, only that the c ... More >>
Blogs
October 27, 2011
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.
Blogs
August 17, 2011
Dallas NAACP Will Meet With Local EPA Officials to Discuss City's Flow Control Proposal
Speaking of flow control ...On the other side you'll find a letter that Juanita Wallace, president of the Dallas branch of the NAACP, sent to Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 chief Al Armendariz in which she decries the city's proposal that would force all solid-waste collectors to dump t ... More >>
Blogs
August 12, 2011
What Do "Voluntary" Mean? It Means Dallas Wants Us to Cut Back on Yard Watering. Now.
Dew, the city's water-conservation mascot, is no Perry the Pipe.Last week, you may recall, I asked Frank Librio, Dallas City Hall spokesman, if Dallas had any plans to follow its neighbors' leads and clamp down on water use. To which he responded: "The lakes are currently 84% full and we continue ... More >>
Blogs
August 2, 2011
Knee-Deep in the Waste Stream as Sanitation Services Head Mary Nix Talks Flow Control
Reason I missed Sanitation Services head Mary Nix last week was because she was on a plane bound for California -- Roseville, specifically, site of a "resource recovery" facility that converts trash into renewable energy. Which means ... get ready ... we're about to talk about flow control, the p ... More >>
Blogs
May 18, 2011
Harold Simmons One Step Closer to Getting What He Wants: Everyone's Nuclear Waste
Annette and Harold SimmonsAt 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 >>
Blogs
April 18, 2011
Your Oncor Bill Will Be Going Up
Back in late January Oncor told the Public Utility Commission it wanted to raise Dallas residents' electricity bill by, oh, let's say $4 to $5 a month. Even though there'd been a three-buck jump in your bill only two years ago. Said Oncor, look, it had no choice: People aren't wasting electricity ... More >>
Blogs
February 7, 2011
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 >>
Blogs
February 2, 2011
With Oncor's Rolling Blackouts Done (For Now), Let's Turn to Atmos's "Curtailment Order"
Red Oak KidIt may get (one whole degree) above freezing Friday -- when there's also a 30-percent shot at snow. Which is why Atmos is now concerned about folks draining its supply of natural gas. For now, at least, all's well, says John Paris, president of Atmos Energy Mid-Tex Division. "Our syste ... More >>
Blogs
August 19, 2010
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 >>
Blogs
June 15, 2010
Peek at Three Moneymaking Brainstorms on Tomorrow's Council Briefing Agenda
Today or tomorrow, depending upon when she's got the time to wrap up our chat, we'll post the Unfair Park Interview with Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm concerning this year's $131-million budget cutting that's more like a gutting following last year's to-the-bone. So far in our conversations she's ... More >>
Blogs
June 11, 2010
The City Wins For the Second Time, This Time on Appeal, in Actual Case of the Mondays
Steven Michael was hired in April 2007 as an Environmental Inspector III for the city of Dallas Water Utilities Department, at which point he told his immediate supervisor, Yilam Zerihun, that he had a disability that didn't allow him to lift anything heavier than 20 pounds. Michael, who employme ... More >>
Blogs
January 22, 2009
Let's Talk Trash For a Second
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Calendar
December 4, 2008
Laughin' At Cho
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
September 21, 2008
Last Night: Silver Jews At Hailey's Club
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
News
July 24, 2008
Trash Ain't Nothin' but Cash
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Calendar
June 12, 2008
Sustainable Art
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
April 1, 2008
Laura Miller Ain't No One's Publicist
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
April 1, 2008
Dirty Talk: Laura Miller on "Carbon Sequestration" and "Pulverized Coal"
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
September 19, 2007
Is the Man Behind the TXU Deal a Hero or a Villain? Depends.
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
May 30, 2007
Breaking Wind
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
February 13, 2007
Parts Per Billion and Other Things You Really Oughta Care About If You Breathe
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
February 7, 2007
Micropower to the People!
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
November 16, 2006
Big Brown and Better Than Ever
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
November 7, 2006
More Inconvenient Truths
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
September 27, 2006
That Trinity Thing You Doo-Doo
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
Blogs
June 26, 2006
D/FW Whistleblower to (Finally) Get Day in Court
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>
News
October 2, 2003
Getting the Bird
West Nile keeps animal control officers hopping to collect dead birds
Best of Dallas
September 25, 2003
Best Handyman
George Miller
Best of Dallas
September 26, 2002
Best Thai Restaurant
Banana Leaf
News
October 4, 2001
Power Sharks
Texas consumer advocates worry that deregulation will spawn new ways to prey on the poor
News
March 22, 2001
Road Rage
Homeowners in a Denton County neighborhood wage battle against "taxation without representation"
News
September 9, 1999
Trashy behavior
Dallas gets blamed for doing too little to stop an illegal dump from choking a neighborhood
News
February 22, 1996
Bo? Hell no!
Chicken king Bo Pilgrim wants to bring a new plant and new jobs to East Texas. But East Texans say they want no more of his filthy business.
More >>

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