Environment

In the latest episode of our podcast about the 86th Legislature, Evan Smith talks to state Rep. Chris Paddie, who chairs the House Energy Resources Committee, about the impact of oil and gas activity on the Texas economy, the downside of the upside, and what the future holds.

Full Story 

This is the first legislative session since the storm devastated the Texas Gulf Coast in August 2017. Several measures are afoot to aid in recovery and mitigate the effects of future disasters.

Full Story 

The memorial is about 100 yards away from where the fertilizer plant once stood and has a reflecting pool surrounded by 15 plaques — one for each person who died.

Full Story 

Residents near Altair began complaining that Skull Creek reeked of chemicals. The Texas attorney general's office says a local company is to blame.

Full Story 

Oil and gas companies have complained that protests and court cases have slowed construction of pipelines needed as U.S. fossil fuel production expands.

Full Story 

In recent weeks, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has swiftly sued two companies over major fires at their Houston-area plants. It's a dramatic departure from the state's usual approach to environmental enforcement.

Full Story 

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Executive Director Toby Baker told a special panel of state senators on Thursday that first responders are still actively managing an incident at a Houston-area petrochemical facility that began last month.

Full Story 

For years, Diane Wilson has tried to get Formosa Plastics Corp. to stop discharging plastic pellets from its sprawling petrochemical complex on the Central Texas coast. This week, she's getting her day in court.

Full Story 

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an environmental lawsuit against Intercontinental Terminals late Friday seeking tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

Full Story 

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said that at the maximum levels detected, the benzene levels could cause headaches and nausea, but no long-term effects. State Rep. Briscoe Cain has called for an investigation into the incident.

Full Story 

A decade ago, Laredo leaders hatched an idea for a riverfront development aimed at luring more people to downtown. Now they're trying to get the federal government to make it part of President Donald Trump's border wall.

Full Story 

A fire that broke out Sunday morning at a petrochemical storage facility in the industrial Houston suburb stopped burning overnight.

Full Story 

In a statement Monday afternoon, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said air quality monitoring "had not detected any immediate health concerns at ground level" amid a multi-tank fire at a petrochemical storage facility near Houston.

Full Story 

Before Hurricane Harvey, state aquarium staff evacuated turtles, stingrays, dolphins and other recovering animals from an aging rescue center they feared would blow away. Now, they're asking the state for help to build a new facility.

Full Story 

People can die when small rural pipelines called "gathering lines" explode. But after decades of talk among industry representatives and regulators, the death of a little girl in Texas serves as a reminder that there are still no rules.

Full Story 

A new study by The Nature Conservancy and Texas A&M University says it's more cost effective to buy out homes in clusters instead of an uncoordinated, checkerboard approach.

Full Story 

The Environmental Defense Fund concluded that oil producers burned off more natural gas than they reported to the state. But Texas officials expressed skepticism of those findings during a state Senate hearing Wednesday.

Full Story 

The state has been waiting a year for the federal government to set rules for how $4.3 billion in disaster recovery grants can be spent.

Full Story 

An analysis by the research arm of Environment Texas found that 275 companies across the state reported emitting 63 million pounds of hazardous and climate-warming pollutants from their facilities in 2017.

Full Story 

In 1993, the Legislature passed a law that said state parks and historic sites could receive all of the money generated by a tax on the sale of sporting goods. Since then, state lawmakers have given the parks department only about 40 percent of those collections.

Full Story