The legal wrangling between Texas and the federal government over the state's air-pollution permitting system for big industrial plants is intensifying, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a brief in a federal court yesterday defending the system.

The Texas state climatologist on the reasons for rising temperatures, why international science on climate change is fundamentally sound (no matter what state officials say), what he thinks of our fight with the EPA and how long the drought in Central Texas is likely to continue.

Gov. Rick Perry continued to tout Texas’ superiority to the nation’s capital and the rest of the country when he spoke to the Clean Carbon Policy Summit in Austin this afternoon.

Come January, the Environmental Protection Agency will begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions around the country for the first time — but not if Texas can help it. Attorney General Greg Abbott last week lodged legal challenges in a federal court against EPA actions on multiple fronts, including a reiteration of the state's long-standing argument against the agency's scientific foundation for determining the dangers of greenhouse gas pollution.

Texas has fired off another volley of legal challenges against federal environmental regulators.

Two years after Hurricane Ike's surge washed over Galveston, residents here still struggle to rebuild parts of the island, which has lost about 10,000 people from its pre-flood population of about 50,000. 

Texans are being asked to sound off as the Environmental Protection Agency considers regulating the dumping of coal ash. A public hearing on the issue will be held later today in Dallas. David Martin Davies of Texas Public Radio reports.

A new report by three environmental groups documents dangerous levels of toxic contaminants from coal ash in Texas and elsewhere — and little regulation.

BP's problem-plagued Texas City refinery — where a 2005 explosion killed 15 and injured 170 — now faces two civil lawsuits stemming from its release this spring of more than 500,000 pounds of cancer-causing pollutants over 40 days. One suit seeks $10 billion on behalf of 2,000 exposed workers; the other, filed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, seeks more than $1 million in fines. Both aim to punish the company for one of the largest chemical emissions events the state has ever seen.

Texas is suing to stop the Obama administration's second offshore drilling moratorium.

According to a study commissioned by the town of DISH, which sits in the heart of the gas-rich Barnett Shale region, a permanent air monitor recently installed by the state is giving false readings.

The Endangered Species Act lawsuit over the last remaining naturally migrating flock of whooping cranes will move forward, a federal district judge ruled Wednesday.

Texas beaches aren't awash in oil like the sands are in some other Gulf Coast states, but they could be cleaner, a group of environmental advocates said today as it released an annual review of the nation's beaches.

Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a legal challenge on Monday against the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the agency's rejection of Texas' pollution-permiting system constitutes "improper overreach by the federal government."

Ramshaw's question about an insurance company denying coverage for an infant vaccine prompts a reversal; Stiles' new app lets you poke through mid-year campaign reports on donations and spending; Ramsey finds foreshadowing of the state's big fall races in the campaign finance reports; Aguilar interviews Henry Cisneros about current politics; Dawson finds Texas environmentalists getting advice from an unexpected place; Galbraith on "demand response" that might cut the need for power plants and on the next wave of electric cars; Aguilar on increasing trade through Texas ports of entry; M. Smith on affirmative action battles in higher education; Titus on Mexican college students' drift from border universities to UT-Austin and Texas A&M; and Hamilton on controversy over private, for-profit colleges: The best of our best for the week of July 19 to 23, 2010.

As he has taken on natural gas companies and the agencies that regulate them, DISH mayor Calvin Tillman has become a media darling, an unlikely face of oil and gas reform and a public speaker crisscrossing the country. Now he’s ready to give up — and to leave town entirely.

Grissom, Hamilton, and Philpott on the Texas Democratic Party's state convention, the two-step, the forecast, and the ticket; Galbraith on the political and environmental battle between state and federal environmental regulators, and on a new age of nukes in Texas; Burnson on signs of the times in San Antonio; Ramshaw on hackers breaking into the state's confidential cancer database; Aguilar's interview with Katherine Glass, the Libertarian Party's nominee for governor; Acosta on efforts to stop 'Murderabilia' items that sell because of the association with killers;  Ramshaw and the Houston Chronicle's Terri Langford on the criminal arrest records of workers in state-funded foster care centers; Hu on accusations that state Sunset examiners missed problems with workers compensation regulators because they didn't ask the right questions of the right people; Ramsey and Stiles on the rush to rake in campaign cash, and on political races that could be won or lost because of voter attraction to Libertarian candidates; and Aguilar's fresh take on South Texas' reputation for corruption. The best of our best from June 28 to July 3, 2010.