Danny Cantu is a diesel mechanic who says Dallas Police tossed a flash-bang grenade through his window while he was making a sandwich. In a lawsuit filed back in January, he claims they kicked in the door and yelled, “Get on the ground!” and that he kindly obliged. Then, he…
Has Justin Townes Earle found solace since his excellent 2010 LP Harlem River Blues? Nope. In the legacy of troubled troubadours, he’s still just as tormented by addiction, heartache and a sense that the world is inexorably pressing down. But pain fuels his latest release, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way…
Sierra Club on Tuesday sued Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, the state’s largest unregulated generator of electricity, accusing the company’s Big Brown coal-fired plant near Fairfield of thousands of violations of Clean Air Act standards. The environmental group gave the company an ultimatum last fall when it discovered a litany of…
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…
Before SMU prof Al Armendariz had even warmed the seat at his post as EPA regional chief, he was pilloried as an activist whose research into the air pollution caused by fracking operations made him unfit to run a five-state office overseeing some of the industry’s most important drilling grounds…
A radioactive waste disposal company owned by Harold Simmons’ Dallas-based Contran Corp. has been given the green light by state regulators to dispose of low-grade radioactive waste at a West Texas site. Representative Lon Burnam, who says he possesses confidential documentation exposing an undercurrent of dissent and worry within the…
When President Obama appointed SMU prof Al Armendariz to the EPA regional post in Dallas back in 2009, it was to the sound of collective groaning from the energy industry and Republican politicos. Only months before, he’d authored a study citing oil and gas production as a major source of…
Steve Lipsky gripped a garden hose and held it at arm’s length, staring as a guttering tongue of fire poured from its end and grew another foot before his eyes. “Look at that,” he said in awe as the flame, liquid and sinuous, licked the rural darkness outside his home…
The thing about air pollution is it doesn’t heed county lines or city limits signs. Neither did the shale gas boom, until it moved into the cities and suburbs, where gas producers found themselves navigating a loud, patchwork quilt of municipal regulations that varied from town to town. It happened…
A group of undocumented immigrants is asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional the use of GPS ankle monitors to track immigrants who pose no threat to society. The suit, filed by Arturo Rodriguez of the Isenberg Center for Immigration Equality, targets the ICE Dallas field office and BI Inc.,…
You a big fan of the cinematic sweet spot that existed between 1985 and 1995? Like, say, B-grade, man-in-fishmonster-suit horror? How ’bout tiny buzz-saw robot slashers? Pesticide-tripping exterminators uncovering secret insect intrigue? Yeah? Well, your Jesus was at Texas Theatre Saturday — looking rangy and awesome, wearing smoky, round, actor-emeritus…
Allow us to introduce Gail Spurlock, a Republican from Richardson seeking her party’s nom for the State Board of Education seat. She has some interesting things to say about history in this interview with the North Texas Council, a group “concerned with the direction our country is taking with regards…
Oncor, the transmission company that runs power lines and electricity meters, is just about the only good thing Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings has going for it. Energy Future’s generation arm, Luminant, the largest unregulated power generator in Texas, has seen its coal-fired power plants precipitously lose value because of low…
In a letter Monday, state Representative Lon Burnam called upon Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to allow him to release confidential documents he says prove state regulatory scientists fear a West Texas radioactive waste disposal facility may contaminate groundwater for thousands of years to come. Waste Control Specialists is set…
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 main idea is…
In the spirit of a Republican primary season marked by gleeful kneecapping, Grant Stinchfield, a former NBC 5 investigative reporter running for Congress, has discovered that his opponent, incumbent Kenny Marchant, claimed some endorsements from politicos who aren’t actually behind him in the race for the largely conservative, suburban 24th…
Shale gas extracted by fracking deep formations in Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere is supposed to be the bridge fuel to the sustainable age, capable of powering power plants and, hell, even our cars. It’s become the centerpiece of President Obama’s “all of the above” energy plan. In Texas,…
Back in November, we wrote about Southlake, the well-heeled ‘burb at whose city limits sign the fracking boom was knocking. In many ways, Southlake was emblematic of the difficulties gas producers faced as they followed the shale formation — a mile underground — out of the pastures and into densely…
So often we think of undocumented immigrants as young, rootless men scaling border fences with plastic bags and gallon jugs of water slung over their shoulders. Truth is, people come here, set down roots and have kids. And when they get picked up by authorities, whether for a felony or…
Back in 2009, Michael Scott Page of Mesquite was awaiting trial on an aggravated assault charge. He was reportedly depressed, anxious and eager to get it all over with, but delay after delay pushed his trial back. He allegedly told a longtime friend of his that he felt like “blowing…
More than two years since the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth and the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Board sued Chesapeake for allegedly shorting them on millions in royalties and leaving wells undrilled, the airport and the energy company have reached an agreement. As the price of natural gas hovers at…
Sure, it goes against everything we learned in elementary school — cut in line and suffer ridicule and a knuckle to the shoulder — but it turns out the city of Dallas has every right to allow compressed natural gas-powered taxis to queue-jump at Love Field to improve air quality,…
