The University of Texas released the preliminary results today of that comprehensive study on the controversial natural gas producing process known as hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), drawing no link between it and claims of groundwater contamination. “While there have been casing/cement issues identified by regulators, we haven’t seen evidence in…
The city council-appointed gas drilling task force stopped listening to The Experts yesterday and got down to the business of discussing just what it’ll suggest the council do about the business of fracking. And for its first recommendation, the task force decided … the city should keep on doing what…
Forgive us for seeming a little primate-obsessed today, but the Dallas Zoo is giving us an awful lot of material. Hot on the heels of the news that a Twitter-savvy “rogue” spider monkey got loose this morning and was quickly captured, we heard back from Dr. Lynn Kramer, the deputy…
In Texas, Houston and filthy air have always been synonymous. But the Armpit of Texas has just been dethroned. For concentrated, ozone-laced air pollution, Dallas-Fort Worth has outstripped the country’s petrochemical hub as the EPA’s worst offender. According to watchdog group Downwinders at Risk, DFW exceeded air-quality standards more often…
At last night’s Gas Drilling Task Force public hearing at Dallas City, citizens’ outcries ranged from polite thank-yous to pleas for tighter restrictions all the way to full-on verbal assaults that made fracking sound like the onset of The Apocalypse. Several of the people who spoke at the task force’s…
The Sierra Club gave Luminant Generation Company, downtown-based and one of Texas’s biggest power suppliers, notice Thursday that it plans to sue them for thousands of alleged violations of the Clean Air Act at two of its coal-fired power plants in northeast Texas. According to environmental law organizations Earthjustice and…
Texas ranchers, bowed under the driest year in state history, are looking to Gov. Rick Perry for help. In an online petition, they’re asking him to use the Texas National Guard and any state resources at his disposal to bring hay into the starving ranch country. Drought has withered much…
As chair of the city’s gas drilling task force, Lois Finkelman has a pretty tough job, directing task force meetings, guiding discussions, fielding calls and emails from concerned citizens. (Did we mentioned she doesn’t get paid? Strictly voluntary.). And with a public hearing coming up tomorrow, the task force’s deliberation…
What you see at right is the urban garden the Deep Ellum Community Association would like to plant on this lot at Canton and Good-Latimer. The idea isn’t new: In December 2009 we wrote about DECA’s attempt to green up Deep Ellum, and initially they’d looked at planting on the…
On opposite sides of the legal teeter-totter over gas-drilling, citizen protection and drilling flexibility weigh heavily, with a city’s gas drilling ordinance at the center — trying, at least in theory, to find balance between the two. It’s happened in Forth Worth and other small cities. And next week, Dallas’s…
Water, water, everywhere — more than ample supply to frack, according to Jody Puckett, the director of Dallas Water Utilities, who spoke at yesterday’s gas drilling task force meeting. She clarified that, sure, there’s a drought, and conservation is always important, but she also insisted that water for fracking isn’t…
So, what’s our problem? Mostly, it’s La Nina, that little trollop. She’s been messin’ with Texas for a long time. And the relationship between her cool Pacific sea-surface temperatures and dry times here is pretty well established. For nearly 120 years, since we’ve kept any kind of reliable records, La…
There’s no denying it now: Gulf War Syndrome, characterized by memory loss, lack of concentration, neuropathic pain and depression, is a physiological illness, not a psychological one. A UT Southwestern study, published in the journal Radiology, used a specialized MRI that specifically measures blood flow in the brain and detected…
Since July, the city’s gas drilling task force, established to recommend parameters for Dallas’s fracking ordinance rewrite, has voraciously consumed drilling data, testimony from experts and presentation after presentation on various aspects of the practice. But up to this point, visiting experts have done almost all of the talking. At…
Along with the chart you see above, which celebrates (no, wait, that’s not the right word) our record-breaking 70th day of temperatures at or above 100, the National Weather Service directs our attention to the latest Drought Information Statement issued a few days ago. Long story short: The bad (“blistering…
We hear a lot about income inequality these days, as we do about our collectively clogged arteries. But it’s less often that we’re reminded of how one affects the other. A study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal does just that, tracking the connection between cardiac arrest and income inequality…
This just in from the National Weather Service:DFW Airport has reached 100 degrees today. This ties the record for most 100 degree days in a year (69 days). We should easily surpass this record tomorrow.Great. Swell. Awesome. Break out the … well, not water. That’d be a waste. Which reminds…
Yesterday afternoon, the city’s gas drilling task force heard presentations (slideshows here) from three experts who explained the impact of drilling on noise levels, geology and real estate values. Which was exciting as it sounds: The meeting was moved from City Hall’s sixth floor to a lower-level auditorium, where the…
Turns out, according to this chart just dispatched by the National Weather Service, it’s not the high temps that were awful — though there’s that. It was the low temperatures. If you can call ’em that. Incidentally, NOAA says 95 on Sunday, with “north northeast wind between 5 and 15…
Environmentalists got their turn at the mic at this week’s gas-drilling-panel meeting, where the industry’s opponents took turns airing its dirty bits. While last week, industry representatives lauded the practice for its production of affordable energy and its boosting of the economy, this week drilling sounded a bit rougher around…
If you have a moment, take the time to read this just-released report from the Texas Court Records Preservation Task Force, formed in November 2009 by the Supreme Court of Texas to see just how at-risk the state’s historical docs are. Because most of the most important docs in Texas…
Environmentalists will line up at the horseshoe at this afternoon’s meeting of the city’s gas drilling task force, scheduled, as always, for a 2 p.m. start time. This afternoon’s agenda includes seven presenters who will discuss the effects of drilling from perspectives ranging from hydroecological to financial, all with an…
