Erin Brockovich, the crusading environmental activist who inspired an Oscar-winning performance from Julia Roberts with her work to ensure water safety in California in the 1990s, is taking on the water coming out of faucets in Plano and several other North Texas cities. It might not be safe to drink,…
Atmos Energy has shut off gas to 2,800 homes in Northwest Dallas because of gas leaks, explosions and fires; a child is dead; thousands of people remain shut out of their homes; the company acknowledges that aging steel gas pipes in shifting soil are the problem; and yet Atmos tells…
Oh, right, I’m so offended by all those terrible bike-share bikes showing up around town, polluting the landscape by their unaesthetic presence. No, I’m not. You know what does offend me? Cars. Trucks. Last time I checked, bikes weren’t giving kids leukemia. Check it out. The regional nonprofit clean-air advocacy…
Response to the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston is, sadly, a great example of the severe political entropy and impotence at the top of our political system. But don’t look there. If we look not up but down, to the level of grassroots, we’re going to see where the…
Under normal circumstances when a Republican member of the Congress from Texas calls you “unconscionable,” you probably should just report to the nearest convent and ask them to lock you up in the laundry for the rest of your life. Your moral struggles have come to an end. U.S. Rep…
At some point in the weeks ahead, Congress will commit the nation to an immense investment in Houston and Beaumont/Port Arthur. The opening bid from the White House last week was almost $8 billion in federal funds, probably a mere fraction of the ultimate disbursement. The country should view this…
New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie is accusing Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of hypocrisy over disaster relief, which does make for a certain kind of show. But here in Dallas we could tell people a thing or two about that show. Forget mere hypocrisy. The real show is way…
Whenever Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been asked questions about the state’s lack of preparedness for the catastrophe now eating Houston, he has deflected to expressions of gushing admiration for the bravery of all Texans. And he’s not wrong about Texans. Particularly among rural Texans, there is a powerful all-hands-on-deck…
The argument against leaving all those gaudy Confederate memorials in their places of honor in the city is that they amount to a corrupted version of history written by the losers. I could make the same argument about this private outfit that the mayor wants to create to rule a…
Explore any aspect of Dallas as intently as naturalist Ben Sandifer does on his birding and biking expeditions, and you are bound eventually to see all the rest of the city somewhere in the weave, especially if you look at all of it with the same wonder. Sandifer’s most recent…
For now, let’s pretend for a minute that nobody wants to build an expressway on top of the Trinity River through downtown Dallas. For the sake of argument, let’s just pick up that naughty little gnome of an idea by the ears and plunk it down in the center of…
Dallas County vehicle inspections are about to get a little cheaper. That’s not necessarily a good thing. The Dallas County Commissioners Court voted unanimously Wednesday to stop collecting the $6 fee it’s charged Dallas drivers for more than a decade as part of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s clean…
A lethal fungus that has driven some bat species to near extinction across the eastern United States has been found for the first time in Texas, researchers say. Biologists from Bat Conservation International and Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and Institute of Renewable Natural Resources spent…
On Tuesday afternoon, the United States Army Corps of Engineers granted an easement that will allow the Dakota Access Pipeline to go under a portion of the Missouri River known as Lake Oahe in North Dakota. The easement, sought by the Dallas-based builders of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, will allow…
Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump made things a lot easier for Dallas’ Energy Transfer Partners Tuesday, signing an executive order streamlining the process by which the Kelcy Warren-owned company’s Dakota Access Pipeline will be built. Trump’s order is intended to help Energy Transfer Partners, based in Dallas, with a regulatory…
City Hall’s Approach on Whitewater Fiasco Is To Defend Its Own Castle
The kind of leadership creating successful communities in this city today will be sorely needed nationally soon.
Last session the Texas Legislature voted for a review of the Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry. Yesterday, the commission charged with the review voted on seven recommendations put before them. So, which changes were approved, and which denied? 1) REAUTHORIZE THE AGENCY:…
Tuesday night, about 100 protesters took to the narrow sidewalks around Energy Transfer Partners’ University Park headquarters to rail against the company’s Dakota Access Pipeline, challenging the decision to build the pipeline through the land and sacred sites of North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux tribe. “Dallas stands with Standing Rock,”…
A team led by Stanford University geophysics professor William Ellsworth has linked a 2012, 4.8 magnitude East Texas earthquake to human activity in an article published in the Science journal Thursday. Specifically, Ellsworth and his team found, wastewater injection stemming from hydraulic fracturing at a nearby well likely caused the tremor…
Dallas residents have been haunted by the specter of a 65-foot-tall flood wave thundering down city streets ever since the deteriorating condition of the Lewisville Lake Dam became public knowledge last year. If the 60-year-old earthen dam gave way, Dallas would be under 50-feet of water. This nightmare scenario sent North Texans…
Friday afternoon, both sides in the battle over the Dakota Pipeline got a victory. First U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for an injunction stopping the building of the oil pipeline. Then, shortly after the ruling, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S…
