Feed yards are glutted with the cattle of drought-stricken Texas ranchers forced to liquidate their herds, according to the most recent report from the USDA. Some 640,000 head were placed in feedlots in July, a staggering 56-percent increase from the same time last year. On a recent trip through counties…
Below, in yesterday’s item about Dallas ISD finding a buyer for Davy Crockett, a Friend of Unfair Park brought up another historically designated city landmark: the old Dallas High School (or Main High School or Bryan Street High School or, most recently, Crozier Tech) at Pearl and Bryan, which opened…
After a gas drilling field trip to Arlington and debriefing session, a public hearing at City Hall and a few weeks to let all the information marinate, the city’s gas drilling task force got back to the horseshoe Tuesday afternoon with four items on its agenda — presentations by gas-drilling…
A little more than a month ago, the Dallas gas drilling task force embarked on its mission to tackle the subject of hydraulic fracturing and recommend regulations to be included in the city’s drilling ordinance. At their first meeting on July 12, Rick Trice, the assistant director of planning and…
With each passing day this week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas sets a new record for peak demand — and today is no different. One day after hinting that rolling blackouts may be headed our way, ERCOT sends word that at 2:50 this afternoon it initiated Energy Emergency Alert…
In the end, council members Delia Jasso, Dwaine Caraway and Scott Griggs skipped Mayor Mike’s shindig to sit amongst the public at last night’s hearing in front of the city’s gas drilling task force. And they were surrounded: The council members were joined by about 100 people who addressed many…
You knew it was coming, and here it is: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has issued yet another energy conservation heads-up. Read the whole thing here, but pay attention to this quote from Kent Saathoff, vice president of system planning and operations:”We expect to break our all-time peak electricity…
I don’t trust that Oncor power-outage map — mostly because it doesn’t show operating-on-emergency-back-ups Unfair Park HQ on the in-the-dark list, or maybe we’re just the unlucky 26 sans juice in Dallas. (Says 1,088 are sweating it out in Fort Worth.) Course, it could be worse: We could be living…
The city’s gas drilling task force slurped down a hearty helping of alphabet soup last night, with visits from representatives of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) and the RRC (the Railroad Commission of Texas), all of whom provided a breakdown of the regulatory…
Attorney and Friend of Unfair Park Bill Holston posts semi-regular pieces to FrontBurner under the header Law Man Walking, in which the nature-trekker documents his strolls through the heretofore oft-overlooked slices o’ heaven that remain in and around the city limits. And when Bill’s not penning those, he’s contributing to…
Tuesday, Dallas gas drilling task force members — and city council members Angela Hunt, Linda Koop and, but of course, Sheffie Kadane — poured out of two white 15-passenger vans and into the 100-degree heat at XTO and Chesapeake natural gas sites in various stages of production throughout Arlington. Mayor…
Shortly after the release of that Fort Worth air study, three reps from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality took a bit of a verbal beating last night from locals who told them, over and over and over again, that their agency is not sufficiently protecting the state’s air quality,…
Mohammed squatted atop a five-foot pile of mulch, his shovel jabbed into the chaff somewhere out in the snake-infested, cedar-scrubbed hill country southwest of Dallas. Sweat darkened his black Reebok shirt and soaked his ankle socks and his coal-black hair. He was taking a breather from a community service project…
The much-anticipated Fort Worth Natural Gas Air Quality Study, a major million-dollar undertaking to determine the air quality effects of natural gas drilling, was released toward day’s end yesterday and indicates there’s no need to get your gas masks out just yet — for the most part. The study, conducted…
This just in from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas: Adjust your thermostats to 78 or higher now — or, at the very least, between 3 and 7 p.m. — or the whole state runs the risk of brownouts later. Why? Well, sure — it’s hot, hot, hotter than hell…
Today’s first meeting of the city’s gas drilling task force meeting played out like the pilot episode of a new TV series: It laid out the basic plot line without giving away too much. Which is to say it opened with an introduction of the nine task force members, as…
All at once the in-box filled up with releases from the Environmental Protection Agency, both the national HQ and the regional offices. Long story short: After a series of public hearings held last year, including this one in Arlington, the EPA has decided to go ahead and take a long,…
A long-time Deep Ellumite gave me a tip the other day: If you want to see a cool place where a guy with a great beard makes motorcycles from scratch, check out the gray building on Main Street.So I did, and that’s where I met Aaron Kaufman, the 29-year-old self-taught…
The other night, when Mark Cuban was snuggling with his shiny new safety blanket and dreaming about a flyover for Thursday’s parade, this wasn’t likely what he had in mind: The EPA will conduct low, slow fly-bys of Dallas over the next day or so, taking “baseline air samples” so…
On the way out to the ballpark a couple of weeks ago, as we drove down 30 over Belt Line, the boy noticed for the first time how close the Trinity River runs next the freeway. I told him that’s known as the West Fork of the Trinity, which merges…
Last month, we mentioned a far-reaching University of Texas at Austin study of complaints about gas drilling operations that’s just now getting underway. Meant to connect the dots between air, soil and water quality complaints from the Barnett to the Marcellus Shale, the nine-month project from the university’s Energy Institute…
Several Friends of Unfair Park have sent a heads-up about a particular wager over Mavs-Heat — no, not the governors’ cheapskate bet, but this what-the pitting Bishop Kevin Farrell of the Diocese of Dallas against Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski. Stone crabs and cigars, tortillas and pecan pie — now…
