Environment

Within Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer accounts for about 40 percent of all water use, but its levels are declining sharply. In a dry growing season, the High Plains Water District recorded an average drop of 1.5 feet. Meanwhile, the 2007 state water plan projects that the Ogallala's volume will fall a staggering 52 percent between 2010 and 2060.

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The ongoing battle between the EPA and Texas got a little hotter today, and it could get even more intense as the TCEQ works on a plan to comply with stricter ozone regulations.

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In the latest bout of the state's legal contretemps with the Environmental Protection Agency, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today that Texas will challenge the federal agency's decision to disapprove its qualified facilities program.

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Ramshaw and the Houston Chronicle's Terri Langford on incidents of abuse and mistreatment at residential treatment centers, M. Smith on the state Republican Party platform and 10th Amendment embracers, Galbraith on a pipeline project raising crude concerns and the most important word in water law, Ramsey on former officeholders who are now lobbyists and the possibility of a speaker's race, Grissom on a fight over solar power in Marfa, Hamilton and Aguilar on the TxDOT audit, Philpott on budget cuts affecting school districts and my conversation with Dallas County D.A. Craig Watkins: The best of our best from June 7-11, 2010.

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In the wake of the Gulf spill, anxiety is building about a proposed pipeline that would run through East Texas, ferrying Canadian oil to Port Arthur and Houston for refining.

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The city of Fort Stockton and Fort Stockton Holdings, the company owned by Clayton Williams Jr. and family, have agreed to postpone a hearing on the company's permit to pump trillions of gallons of water from the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer.

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The oilman told the Tribune that BP's CEO has made some verbal "boo-boos" but that offshore work must continue: "You know, we can drill those wells in the deep water."

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In the West Texas outpost of Marfa, Malinda Beeman is waging war. Her target: a company that plans to erect at least 1,000 three-story mirrored satellite dishes designed to harness energy from the blisteringly bright desert sun.

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Hundreds of oil-covered animals have been rescued from the Gulf of Mexico so far. As Erika Aguilar of KUT News reports, the volume of casualties is steadily increasing.

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Congress is known for having arcane battles, but the biggest fight these days in water law is over a single word in a 1970s-era measure designed to reduce pollution in America's waterways. Texas environmentalists and ranchers are anxiously awaiting the outcome.

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Texas will adopt stricter energy efficiency requirements for new buildings, the State Energy Conservation Office announced today. They will go into effect in 2011 and 2012.

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The oil spill has so far bypassed Texas, but Houston could still see a big impact — in the courtrooms.

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The Fort Hood shooter made his first courtroom appearance Tuesday, but a trial, the military court decided, won't happen until October.

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Effective today, the Trib has a dedicated energy reporter on staff: Kate Galbraith, formerly of The Economist and The New York Times.

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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has nearly doubled its number of administrative enforcement actions against polluters in the last five years — yet critics charge the agency still levies penalties too small to act as a deterrent.

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There was mixed reaction in Texas to the president's remarks yesterday on the response to the Gulf oil spill, which critics have labeled "Obama's Katrina." KUT's Matt Largey reports.

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In the wake of the BP catastrophe, former Railroad Commissioner Barry Williamson is defending the federal Minerals Management Service, which he led during the Exxon Valdez spill. “Was there a failure of regulation? I don't know," he says. "There may not have been."

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Former President George W. Bush appeared in rousing, joke-cracking form in a rare speech this morning the American Wind Energy Association's conference in Dallas. He praised Texas wind energy, bashed the media, refused to bash his successor and said his grandchildren will be driving electric cars. He also gave away the first line of his forthcoming memoir, a quote from his wife that got him to quit drinking.

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Jan Newton — who chairs the board of directors at the state's electric utility grid operator — is stepping down from that post, leaving the agency with interim officeholders and holes in key positions at the top of its organization chart.

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While Congress investigates the April 20 explosion that killed 11 people and spiked an underwater oil leak that continues to spill more than 210,000 gallons a day, another BP rig is at the center of its own firestorm.

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