Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan on Friday will meet with community leaders and advocates in Houston neighborhoods where pollution has impacted people’s health.
Erin Douglas
Erin Douglas was the climate reporter for The Texas Tribune from 2020 through 2023 where she covered the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat, drought and hurricanes. She reported on the toll flooding takes on mental health, investigated a chemical fire at an industrial facility, and covered the collapse of Texas’ power grid that led to widespread blackouts across the state. Her coverage of the Texas blackouts in 2021 was recognized by the Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Erin was previously a business and economy reporter at the Houston Chronicle where she covered labor, energy and the environment. She studied journalism and economics at Colorado State University, and her first newsroom job was interning at The Denver Post, her hometown newspaper.
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Climate Change in Texas
As world leaders seek to rein in methane, Texas’ oil and gas industry pressured to cut emissions
A proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule could require oil and gas producers to monitor and reduce emissions of methane in the field.
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Winter Storm 2021
Power companies required to better prepare plants for winter in first phase of rule approved by Texas regulators
The state Public Utility Commission adopted a rule — which experts first recommended a decade ago following a winter storm — requiring power companies to use “best efforts” to ensure plants can operate in the winter.
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Energy
Oil industry helped handpick members of Texas advisory group for electric grid reliability, emails show
Oil and gas industry groups provided a list of names to the Railroad Commission for appointment to a council formed in response to the February power crisis. All four of the industry’s top choices were selected.
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Climate Change in Texas
Climate change is making Texas hotter, threatening public health, water supply and the state’s infrastructure
A report from the state climatologist finds that the state is experiencing hotter days with less relief from high temperatures at night.
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Demographics
The Karankawa were said to be extinct. Now they’re reviving their culture — and fighting to protect their ancestors’ land.
Historians long thought the Karankawa people had disappeared. But now a group of descendants is fighting to protect a coastal area — where thousands of Karankawa artifacts were found — from an encroaching oil export facility.
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Environment
Texas sees limited damage in wake of Tropical Storm Nicholas as storm weakens and takes aim at Louisiana
“I think we fared well,” said one official in Matagorda County, where Nicholas made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Tuesday morning.
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Texas Abortion Restrictions
We annotated Texas’ near-total abortion ban. Here’s what the law says about enforcement.
The law will be carried out by civilians “deputized” to do what the state cannot: enforce its new restrictive abortion law. Here’s where the process is laid out in the statute and what it means.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Texas bans storage of highly radioactive waste, but a West Texas facility may get a license from the feds anyway
The new law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. A decision from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on one company’s license could come as early as Monday.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Texas abortion law a “radical expansion” of who can sue whom, and an about-face for Republicans on civil lawsuits
Senate Bill 8, which allows anyone to sue anyone who performs or aids in an abortion, marks an unprecedented change to who has standing to bring a lawsuit. The tactic is also an emerging trend in Republican-dominated states that may compromise constitutional rights, some legal experts said.
