The last ride of legendary storm chaser Tim Samaras
He had an uncanny knack for finding tornadoes. Then one found him.
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Dallas City Council Denies Trinity East Drilling Permits
After nearly seven years, Trinity East has its answer. It all began when the Fort Worth independent answered a call put out by a cash-strapped city for bids to sink natural gas wells into the far eastern frontier of the Barnett Shale — unproven territory few operators had ventured into…
A Texas Landowner’s Quest to Stop the Keystone Pipeline Has Been Killed by the Courts
The legal fight aimed at halting the advance of the Keystone pipeline through Texas was cut off at the knees on Tuesday. A state appeals court in Texarkana threw out Lamar County landowner Julia Trigg Crawford’s lawsuit against TransCanada, rejecting arguments that Keystone can’t condemn land because it’s an interstate…
Railroad Commission Lets Luminant Expand Coal Mines Even as Bankruptcy Looms
Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, Texas’ biggest power generator and utility, is in danger of going bankrupt, and some believe it’s quite possible that the Texas taxpayer will get left with the tab. As we noted last month, the Railroad Commission of Texas allowed EFH’s subsidiary, Luminant Mining, to post what’s…
Texas Supreme Court to Decide If Gay Dallas Couple Can Divorce
Jeffrey and Henry Buck were married in Massachusetts on September 22, 2006, some two years after the state recognized same-sex unions. They moved to Texas in 2008 and quickly discovered what heterosexual couples have known for ages about the sanctity of matrimony: Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. The Bucks…
Door Slowly Closing at Plan Commission on Frack Sites Along the Trinity River
Before the Dallas Plan Commission got to what is almost certainly the most controversial matter it has ever deliberated on — whether and how the city should drill for natural gas — it spent more than an hour on the positioning of a wooden fence and a gazebo in relation…
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Luminant Will Fight DOJ Clean Air Act Lawsuit, Says it Is “Without Merit”
As we reported last week, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Dallas-based Luminant, Texas’ biggest power generator, for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. The federal complaint, filed on behalf of the EPA, contends Luminant made major modifications to two of its biggest northeast Texas coal-fired power plants…
Whistleblower Lawsuit Supports Our Worst Suspicions About How the Railroad Commission Regulates Oil and Gas
Frederick Wright presumably knows a thing or two about the oil and gas business. He’s a petroleum engineer who has worked on both sides of the fence. He spent some time with the Bureau of Land Management. Eventually, he worked for more than a decade as engineer in oil and…
DOJ Sues Dallas-based Power Generator Luminant for Alleged Clean Air Act Violations
Last summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put Dallas-based power generator Luminant on notice, warning the utility that its northeast Texas Big Brown and Martin Lake plants were in violation of the Clean Air Act. The company’s coal-fired plants, EPA contended, had been modified, resulting in a “significant” increase in…
Report Says Texas Nursing Homes Are the Worst in the Country, And This Video Might Just Convince You
Minnie Graham, a 98-year-old great-great-grandmother, kept telling her family that people were hitting her at Garland’s Winters Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. When her loved ones found her eyes blackened and her arms bruised, they demanded answers. Graham, they were told, had fallen out of her wheelchair. Her granddaughters didn’t…
Southlake Oil and Gas Flim-Flam Man Has a Really, Really Bad Month
There was a time for Jason Halek when life was all luxury suites at Cowboys Stadium and showroom-fresh Hummers. Investors were pumping millions into his oil-and-gas start-up. Then everything, as it so often does when your business model revolves around misleading investors, sort of fell apart. The last few years…
Report: Energy Future Holdings Might Be Pushed into Bankruptcy by the End of the Year
It’s no secret that Dallas-based utility Energy Future Holdings is headed toward a restructuring of its untenable debt. As part of a potential bankruptcy plan disclosed back in April, senior debt holders would forgive tens of billions of dollars owed by the company’s power generation arm, Luminant, in exchange for…
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Oil-Loving Texas is Still the U.S. King of Wind Power
For a state that loves its earthbound, carbon-based fuels, Texas sure seems to be betting big on mammoth turbines that harness the howling prairie winds. In fact, last year we added more wind-power capacity than any other state. Texas remains the unequivocal king, with more than twice the installed wind…
A Little Context for U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson’s Epic Jeremiad Against Lamar Smith’s EPA Subpoena
U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson got a few things off of her chest last week during a recent House committee hearing. Last week, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, chaired by Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, issued a congressional subpoena for the first time in more than two…
Douglas Feldman, the Plano terminator, lived and died an evil bastard
Douglas Alan Feldman, 55, the remorseless, highly intelligent psychopath who terrorized three North Texas counties for more than a week while he went on a shooting rampage, was executed Wednesday. And he shuffled off his mortal coil with the same venom with which he inhabited it. According to an Associated…
These Dallas-area Creationists Might Just Be Shaping High School Biology Textbooks
The culture war for young Texan minds is kicking back into high gear. The State Board of Education sent 28 invites to experts around the state to review high school biology textbooks. About a dozen showed up in Austin this week for the final phase of the review. They’ll make…
UTA Survey of Barnett Shale Water Wells Finds Contaminant Levels Highest Near Fracking
The question Dr. Kevin Schug set out to answer was refreshingly simple: Does drilling activity in the Barnett Shale contribute to groundwater contamination? There is no shortage of assurances of safety from industry, or claims of mysterious illness from aggrieved landowners and environmental types. So, Schug and a fellow researcher…
George P. Mitchell, Fracking Pioneer, Has Died
George P. Mitchell, the billionaire wildcatter behind Governor Rick Perry’s “Texas Miracle,” died this morning at the age of 94. His legacy, you could say, is an unconventional oil and gas revolution that utterly upended the energy calculus in this country. Where we once built liquefied natural gas import terminals,…
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Lawmakers More Interested in Horse Crap than Science at Congressional Fracking Hearing
Fracking hearings held by the U.S. House almost always make for fine kabuki theater. Back when Rockwall’s skydiving septuagenarian nonagenarian Congressman Ralph Hall ran the show, you couldn’t glean much from the proceedings other than the impression that any scientific inquiry into the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing was just…
This Is the Texas Giant Drop That Tossed a Dallas Woman From the Six Flags Coaster
At roughly the 54-second mark of this 2011 video, Six Flags’ Texas Giant roller coaster reaches the apex of that first climb. Then, it descends at a 79-degree angle — almost straight down — for nearly 150 feet. At around 7 p.m. Friday, during this stomach-churning descent, 52-year-old Rosa Irene…
As Execution Nears, Plano Road-Rage Killer Claims Inhumane Treatment, Neglects to Mention He Tried To Tear Phone From Wall
Barring a stay of execution, Douglas Feldman is scheduled to die in nine days. His petition for a state writ of habeas corpus based on ineffective assistance of counsel has gone nowhere. He claims his trial attorney failed to investigate the role his alleged bipolar disorder played in the murders…
The Seaway Pipeline Will Carry as Much Oil as the Keystone, but First It Needs to Condemn Some Land
Property rights in Texas are supposed to be sacrosanct, practically God-given. So the ease with which pipeline companies seize private land through eminent domain is curious. The law here is anything but settled. That’s where landowners like Freddy Davenport come in. Increasingly, disputes between citizens like Davenport and huge pipeline…