One of the Top Texas House Races Could Come Down to a Single Issue: Water
As Corpus Christi reels from a severe water crisis, debates rage on at the city level and in a top targeted fight for state House District 34, currently held by a Republican.
Environment
Permian Basin Community Seeks Fix for Radium in Its Drinking Water
Utilities serving thousands of Texans exceed legal limits for radium.
Who Pays for the High-Powered Grid that Data Centers Need?
Texas would make large AI hyperscalers pay for the wires that connect them. Whether they must also pay directly for the broader grid work needed to serve them is still an open question.
With Texas’ Data Center Boom, Uncertainty Is the Business Plan
Proposed projects are driven by sketchy numbers nobody has to prove: inflated demand, water use most companies never report, power plans that route around ordinary review. Either way, the public pays.
The Hard Ceiling over Texas Cities’ Climate Plans
From the biggest cities to smaller towns, local officials wrote serious climate plans. One law at a time, state policy has narrowed the tools to carry them out.
Texas’ Refusal to Plan for Climate Change Created a Crisis in Corpus Christi
Stubbornly unrealistic assessments of the region’s reservoir system turned this year’s drought conditions into an emergency.
Texas Has a Water Shortage and a Water Glut. They’re the Same Problem.
Every day the Permian Basin brings up more water than nearby communities use, and treats most of it as waste. The state can no longer afford to do so.
Get the newsletter
From the Plantation to the Thicket: Juneteenth, Black Freedom, and ‘Marronage’ in Texas
Freedom in Texas was achieved both after—and before—formal emancipation.
In Laredo’s Last Stand Against Trump’s Border Wall, Are City Leaders Making a Deal with the Devil?
"A lot of the same arguments for why you wouldn't build it in Big Bend are the exact same arguments for why you wouldn't build it in Laredo," say opponents of the wall, as local officials have sought to accommodate the feds' demands.
Texas’ Fight Against the Screwworm Will Be Nasty and Brutish
And with any luck, it’ll also be short.