The Texas Observer

"If we cut their water off, we cut their head off."-Bay City rice farmer Here's an interesting, if inevitable, development in the Texas coal wars. Bay City Tribune: Matagorda County rice farmers and representatives from Public Citizen have formed action groups to oppose the progress of White Stallion Energy Center. White Stallion is the 800-megawatt coal plant slated for a tract of land outside of Bay City. The developers plan to consume water (about 22,000 acre-feet) from the Colorado River, a river that is under increasing stress from the Central Texas population boom and merciless drought. The coastal rice farms… Read more...

I love it! Rep. "Smokey" Joe Barton (R-Tx) can't recall how he got a lucrative interest in natural gas wells just two years ago. It's an odd memory lapse considering that it he received it as a gift from a close friend and long-time political contributor not long before the man died. The Dallas Morning News has the goods: At a hearing last month of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Barton said he was "a small, small partner in a natural gas well in Johnson County in the Barnett Shale that is probably my 4-year-old son's college education." He… Read more...

My reaction to Obama's State of the Union remarks on climate change last night: underwhelming. He uttered the phrase "climate change" precisely once. Worse, the president missed an opportunity to communicate the gravity of the crisis to the American people. Instead, he mildly rebuked Republicans for denying the "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change" and then turned around and endorsed a grab-bag of corporatist energy policies that will have a negligible effect on greenhouse gas emissions. I can understand that in a rotten economy, people want to hear about job creation, but look at the "clean energy" policies Obama called… Read more...

The following is a report by super-duper Observer intern Laura Burke: Really, what would inspire the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to renew the permit of one of the worst polluters in Texas' history? State Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso) is pretty sure the answer to that question lies hidden in internal documents that TCEQ is fighting like hell to keep under seal. The internal agency documents might reveal details about secret meetings between TCEQ commissioners and representatives of the now-defunct copper smelter ASARCO that occurred while TCEQ was considering the renewal of the company's air permit in 2008. There's… Read more...

The North Central Texas Fusion Center, a regional counterterror system owned by Collin County's Homeland Security Department, appears intent on making intelligence stupid. In a secret "threat assessment" prepared for the Fort Worth Police Department's Intelligence Division in December 2008, the center urged law enforcement officers to monitor people of "Middle Eastern appearance" at a college football bowl game in Fort Worth that month. A portion of the threat assessment—stamped "Law Enforcement Sensitive" and part of a PowerPoint presentation—was inadvertently sent to the Observer as part of a broader open-records request. "Although the North Central Texas Fusion System analysis has… Read more...

Until recently, the North Texas town of DISH (population: 181) was best known–if it was known at all–for changing its name from Clark in 2005 to score free satellite TV. The rebranding provoked ridicule from The Daily Show and complaints that corporate marketing had gotten out of control. But around that time, Calvin Tillman–then a town councilman and now mayor–began his crusade against a more powerful, and potentially destructive, corporate interest swarming his town: natural gas companies. In five years, the gas producers have turned DISH into the epicenter of the Barnett Shale, seizing citizens' land for pipelines, and building… Read more...

If TCEQ disappeared tomorrow, would anyone know the difference? Sometimes I wonder. Here's the latest: After years of citizen complaints about air pollution linked to the natural gas boom in Ft Worth, the agency finally did some air quality testing. TCEQ officials then told the Ft Worth City Council that the tests showed no harmful levels of pollutants. The council, which has been friendly to the gas companies, was evidently pleased; the mayor hailed the good news. But, lo and behold, the test results came with a hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-insulting caveat: This data is for screening purposes only and may include samples… Read more...

I gotta give credit to D Magazine: They had the guts to headline an article "Harold Simmons Is Dallas' Most Evil Genius." Of course Simmons – Republican financier, Swift Boater, corporate raider, radioactive and hazardous waste empresario – may very well take that as a compliment. Simmons hasn't made his billions playing nice. He's done it ruthlessly, spending money and political capital lavishly to get his way. As the article nicely illustrates, Simmons has cunningly found a way to get the taxpayer to pay him twice in his waste management business. As regular readers of the Observer will know, we've… Read more...

Barack Obama may be disappointing progressives on many fronts but for long-embattled Texas environmentalists the good news keeps rolling in. For years, clean air activists, elected officials in North Texas and independent experts have urged the installation of anti-pollution technology on a cluster of cement kilns in Midlothian south of Dallas. Collectively, the ten kilns are responsible for roughly half of all ozone-forming gasses in DFW, or 8 to 9 percent of all smog in the area. The technology, known as selective catalytic reduction, can reduce ozone emissions from the kilns by up to 90 percent and is already in… Read more...

Calvin Tillman, the indefatigable mayor of DISH, Texas, is lobbing another grenade at the natural gas industry and their partners in state government. In a press release last evening, Tillman announced that on December 13, he commissioned emergency air testing by a private engineering firm after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Railroad Commission ignored his calls. That day, Tillman says, the town was inundated with acrid fumes from nearby gas compression stations. Air sampling by Wolf Eagle Environmental found that DISH "continutes to show high levels of atmospheric VOCs known to have both carcinogenic and neurotoxin capabilities… Read more...