The latest environment news from The Texas Tribune.
Next week will be six months since a BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico began spewing out millions of barrels of crude. Scientists are now scrambling to collect data and determine what — if any — long term damage the Gulf ecosystem might suffer. Matt Largey of KUT News reports. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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Law enforcement agencies are again warning patrons of Falcon Lake in South Texas to stay on the U.S. side of the popular fishing spot. The warning follows the fatal shooting of a U.S. man by Mexican pirates who allegedly attacked him after he traveled into Guerrero Viejo, Tamaulipas, on his Jet Ski. Full Story
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Whoever wins the governor's race in November will face a variety of pressing questions concerning one of the state's biggest industries: energy. Texas is a top producer of natural gas, oil and, more recently, wind power. As things stand now, the state is coping with a federal moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling, bracing for federal action on climate change and other air pollution, preparing for an influx of electric cars and debating whether to enact a mandate for renewable energy sources other than wind. How do Rick Perry and Bill White come down on the issues? Full Story
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Texas air-pollution regulators today approved a crucial environmental permit for a large and controversial coal plant in Matagorda County. Full Story
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There are no viable substitutes for the longest segment of a controversial proposed transmission line through the Hill Country, the state grid operator reported today. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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Ramsey on the fourth University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (with insights into the statewide races, issues, the budget, and Texans' view of the national scene), Hamilton and Thevenot in Galveston on the anniversary of Hurricane Ike, Ramshaw on secret hearings that separate children from their guardians, Hu on what former state Rep. Bill Zedler did for doctor-donors who were under investigation, Aguilar on the troubles around Mexico's bicentennial, Galbraith talks coal and wind with the head of the Sierra Club, E. Smith interviews state Rep. Debbie Riddle about tourism babies and godless liberals, Grissom on why complaints about city jails go unaddressed, Philpott on the debate that will apparently never happen and Stiles continues to put the major-party gubernatorial candidates on the map: The best of our best from September 13 to 17, 2010. Full Story
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The executive director of the Sierra Club on the perils of coal ash, why wind is a good thing, the priorities of state environmental-quality officials and how Texas oil companies are working to roll back California's global warming regulation. Full Story
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An interview with Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club Full Story
Texas has fired off another volley of legal challenges against federal environmental regulators. Full Story
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Despite opposition from Hill Country landowners, the Texas Public Utility Commission declined to throw out one of the proposed wind-power transmission lines through Hill Country during an open meeting this morning. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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Two years after Hurricane Ike’s surge crossed Galveston like a speed bump on its way to Houston, planners and academics are staring down multibillion-dollar public policy dilemmas. To describe Ike as a “wake-up call” understates and trivializes the matter. Like other coastal areas around the nation and around the world, the Houston-Galveston region is only now grappling with complex and costly questions of how to protect sprawling seaside development from the combination of subsidence and an expected sea-level rise from global warming. Full Story
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This week, the Tribune put together a three-part series exploring the state's $5 billion transmission-line build-out to support wind power, which is mostly generated in West Texas but needs to be shipped to cities in Central and East Texas. The project is known as CREZ, short for Competitive Renewable Energy Zones. Full Story
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While West Texas has become the nation's wind-power hub, the Panhandle's ferocious winds go largely untapped. That could change with a slew of proposed transmission line projects that could, in turn, enable forests of turbines — if landowners can be soothed. Part three of a three-part series. Full Story
The epicenter of the fight over the state's wind power transmission lines is the Hill Country, where landowners are spending lots of money and time to keep the lines from being built. They're trotting out every conceivable argument, and they may just succeed. Part two of a three-part series. Full Story
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Texas already harvests more wind power than any state in the nation, bringing the promise of clean energy to millions of homes and businesses. Trouble is, getting that power from remote, windy West Texas to the big cities requires a massive, $5 billion network of transmission lines — which property owners in the Hill County and elsewhere don't want in their back yards. As construction gets under way on the new lines, an army of lawyers and angry landowners is working to stymie the state's renewable energy plans. Part one of a three-part series. Full Story
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On Monday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced more than half a billion dollars in funding for "clean coal" projects across the country. As Nathan Bernier of KUT News reports, a sizable chunk of that federal spending will land right here in Texas. Full Story
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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. Full Story
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