Some 285 miles above the Earth’s surface, a pair of NASA satellites can measure changes in groundwater levels at river-basin scale. And what they’re telling us about Texas and much of the South is disturbing. The satellites are identifying hot spots that blanket East Texas and much of the Panhandle,…
William Wylly Lamar is something of a rock star amongst readers of sites like HerpNation.com and WildHerps.com. His reptile-capturing skills — we’re talking herpetology here, folks — are unparalleled, as is his knowledge. He wrote the book on venomous snakes. Several books, actually, including his magnum opus, the two-volume The…
It’s no secret that North Texas is lusting after Oklahoma’s water. Here we are struggling to quench a thirsty and growing population, while our neighbor to the north hogs its bountiful supply of H2O, which is roughly 10 times its projected need. The Tarrant Regional Water District made the first…
Andrew Beal isn’t your typical banker. For starters, he’s a lot richer. He’s No. 43 on Forbes’ list of the country’s richest people, worth an estimated $8.5 billion. And he’s always been less interested in conspicuous displays of wealth than in things like rockets, poker strategy and mathematical theory. His…
The city of Frisco plans to build a 275-acre, $23 million “Grand Park.” It will be a regional attraction, a center to the city, replete with a festival green, a park for the kiddos and a “grand promenade” reaching out into a man-made lake with fountains of cool water. The…
Landowners along the nearly 500-mile southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline say contractors have been excavating long-buried lengths of pipe to repair apparent defects. They’ve documented stakes jutting from turned-up dirt near the pipeline right-of-way through East Texas that read, “anomaly,” “dent” and “weld.” They’ve seen sections of excavated…
For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. This…
When preservationists began lobbying Sylvan 30 developer Brent Jackson to return the Alamo Plaza sign to its home along Fort Worth Avenue, this isn’t what they had in mind. From the Sylvan 30 website: We’ve heard you and we agree: The Alamo Plaza sign will stay at Sylvan | Thirty…
First, the good news: Crazy ants don’t sting. They do sometimes bite, but the pain is mild, and it fades quickly. Even better, they drive out their stinging cousins, fire ants, which have been tormenting Texans for decades. Now, the bad news: When entomologists say “crazy,” they mean it. “When…
First, the good news. According to a report just released by the American Lung Association, the air in Dallas-Fort Worth has gotten considerably cleaner in recent years. The average number of days with unhealthy levels of ozone has been cut in half over the past decade, and the concentration of…
Back in March, the Keystone XL pipeline’s approval looked practically assured. Construction of the 1,179-mile leviathan, connecting Alberta’s tar sand mines with Texas Gulf Coast refiners, was already well underway in Texas. The State Department said Canadian tar sands production would proceed apace, with or without the pipeline. By rail…
The West Nile virus is officially back. Public health officials got their first confirmation of that last week when mosquito pools in Richardson tested positive for the disease. Today, Highland Park announced a positive test of its own. Dallas County is already urging residents to use insect repellant, drain standing…
Joe Barton, the Republican Congressman representing Arlington and its environs, has never been shy about expressing his skepticism about global warming. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he launched an investigation into a pair of studies that documented a dramatic spike in global temperatures, sparred with Al…
There was a minor furor in the media last year when a study conducted by a researcher at Standford’s medical school concluded that organic fruits and vegetables are no healthier than their conventionally raised counterparts. This wasn’t quite as newsworthy as the headlines made it sound, since the study was…
The Texas House and Senate took up legislation Tuesday to address a drought-induced water crisis. A proposed bill out of the House would pull $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to implement a 50-year water plan. Municipalities and water districts could apply for funds the state would prioritize…
Congressman Steve Stockman represents what the evidence tells us is an especially crazy swath of Texas in the suburbs of Houston. There’s really no other way to explain why voting-age Americans could choose to send such an individual to Washington as their duly elected representative. Last month, it was the…
Austin’s plastic bag ban has been in effect for three weeks now, and the city has so far managed to avoid economic Armageddon. Austinites, it seems, are still able to buy groceries, go shopping, and order restaurant takeout. They just have to carry their purchases in reusable bags. It’s an…
Policymakers in Austin, having finally come to terms immensity of the state’s water challenges, are about to throw some serious cash at the issue. But the vast majority of this, more than 96 percent, is going toward building new reservoirs and pipelines. Trammell S. Crow, among others, has a problem…
One of the few areas of bipartisan agreement in Austin this legislative season is that the state needs to take major steps to meet the state’s long-term water needs. The arithmetic — exploding population + historic drought + increasingly stressed water supply — is simply too stark to ignore. The…
Last week, the number of drilling rigs operating in the Barnett Shale, the massive natural gas reservoir that underlies much of North Texas, dropped to 27, the lowest figure in a decade. But the boom’s not over quite yet. There may be less drilling going on at the moment, but…
As it stands, anyone caught watering their lawns more than twice a week and/or during daytime hours and/or outside the official watering days ordained by City Hall faces a fine of between $250 and $2,000. As of last summer, the city had handed down slightly more than a handful. But…
If there is one thing I hate, it’s talking about morality with people who agree with me. But this has been one of those weeks. I’m your basic anti-gas-and-oil-fracking-in-parks type of guy. Call me soft. I’ve just always been against major petro-chemical operations where the children play. So generally speaking…
