It’s a time of scrutiny in Austin for the Texas Railroad Commission. The oil, gas and mining regulator is now under review by the state’s Sunset Advisory Commission, which evaluates agencies’ performance. The Sunset Commission can recommend changes, up to termination of the agency. These are only recommendations. The previous…
Southern Methodist University seismologists recently revealed human-induced earthquakes in North Texas are not only caused by oil and gas operations but also have been occurring since the 1920s across Texas. Oil and gas industry professionals were quick to denounce seismologists findings, and the Texas legislature was quick to take action…
As the cases of Zika and West Nile Virus continue to rise in Dallas County (20 Zika cases and ten West Nile as of today) more pesticides will be sprayed from trucks in more neighborhoods, insect repellent will be applied to ourselves and our children more thoroughly, and aerial spraying…
With Zika at the forefront of the news, everyone’s thinking about mosquitoes. The good news: There have been no local mosquito-borne transmissions of Zika virus in Texas to date, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has identified 16 travel-associated cases of Zika in Dallas. …
The sun shines brightly on Texas, and there’s a lot of Texas for it to shine on. Little surprise, then, that Texas has the potential to generate more electricity from solar — more specifically, the solar panels people and businesses can install on their roofs — than any other state…
Let’s say, just for grins, they don’t wind up building that six-lane expressway along the Trinity River in downtown Dallas. Guess what. All of a sudden we’re looking at an adventure that could put Dallas at the global forefront of the most crucial issue facing mankind in the 21st century…
Thanks to one of the many quirks of Texas law, facilities across Texas industry aren’t heavily penalized for otherwise illegal pollution when that pollution happens because of anything classified as an accident or maintenance. In 2015, that meant 68 million pounds of air pollution, stemming from 3,421 breakdown and maintenance incidents,…
Along the green, tree-lined country road, four large metal tanks tower on a gravel field, clean and tan-colored against a cloudless blue sky. But the breeze brings an odd metallic tang to the back of one’s throat, and the view changes through an infrared camera’s viewfinder. When the lens zooms in…
Add one more study to the pile of evidence that activity related to oil and gas drilling is responsible for an unusual spate of earthquakes rattling Texas. This week, University of Texas scientists published a report in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth that said it was plausible that a…
Dams, dams, dams seem to be on everyone’s damn mind as reports about Lewisville Lake dam, a nearly 70-year-old earthen structure, and Grapevine Lake dam, 62-year-old, have appeared in newspapers and online website in recent months alerting readers to the deterioration affecting dams not just across the metro area but…
Just south of the Trinity River Audubon Center, across a footbridge and down a concrete trail that snakes along an east-west jaunt of the river, you’ll come to what was once one of Steve Smith’s favorite spots in the Great Trinity Forest. “Go into the [Google Earth] aerial photos from…
On a sunny Easter Sunday, to the music of kids chasing across a lakeside expanse of brilliant green, I spoke with a smart young lawyer, a commercial litigator with a big firm, who was telling me why she might vote for Donald Trump. She said she was sick of government…
Just looking at the map is striking. According to new data released by the U.S. Geological Survey, human activity is causing earthquake risk in areas that previously had basically no risk for seismic activity. The survey’s new 2016 map shows natural risk, which for the most part cuts off just…
The threat of oil and gas extraction within 850 feet of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-controlled Joe Pool Lake dam in 2010 initiated a red alert for the federal agency that controls our nation’s dams. Corps officials pleaded with energy giants XTO and Chesapeake to stop exploration so close…
Sixty-five Texas water systems serving 82,000 people have tested positive for levels of arsenic higher, and sometimes much higher, than what’s considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Environmental Integrity Project says. The authors of the report say the state of Texas hasn’t done a good enough job of…
You know what’s wrong with the new Dallas-based storyline in House of Cards, the Netflix White House soap opera? The same thing that’s wrong with the country. The screenplay assumes that wickedness, cynicism and self-serving hypocrisy flow from the center outward. It’s the whole “fed-up” paradigm now, left and right…
Back in the good old days of cartoons, it was considered howlingly funny for a cartoon character to be old, bald, not very bright and legally blind. Have him walk into a door and fall down sharply: The audience was spitting up popcorn, falling out of their chairs. We’ve made…
Reverchon Park is one of Dallas’ best public spaces, an unexpectedly sylvan expanse sandwiched between Uptown and Oak Lawn. Yesterday morning, the loveliness was marred by an overpowering stench of gasoline. like someone had dumped out several gallons of fuel a few feet away. The smell had no obvious source. There…
I’m worn out. I spent part of my day trying to get Howard Garrett, the Dallas-based national radio host known as the “The Dirt Doctor,” to take an hour or two away from his lifelong battle with Big Chem, Texas A&M and the pesticide industry and pat himself on the…
This latest round of catastrophic flooding on the Mississippi River and its tributaries is trying to tell us something: Don’t believe a single thing our local or federal officials tell us about flood safety. But if we were capable of learning that lesson, we wouldn’t be where we are right…
You can probably trust the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on this one. The dam holding back Lake Lewisville probably isn’t going to fail in the immediate future. The 180 billion or so gallons of water it holds back probably won’t burst free and wash away the half-million people in its…
This is the last thing I will ever write about water, I promise, really and truly. It’s all going to be about space aliens and sexual enhancement operations from here on out unless something gigantic happens. But since we’ve been chatting anyway these last few days about problems with a…
