Ignoring Water Worries, Texas Permits Lignite Mine Expansion
The state has issued only two new coal mining permits in 10 years to a company with a controversial environmental legacy.
Since 1954
Dylan Baddour covers the energy sector and environmental justice in Texas for Inside Climate News. Born in Houston, he’s worked the business desk at the Houston Chronicle, covered the U.S.-Mexico border for international outlets and reported for several years from Colombia for media like The Washington Post, BBC News and The Atlantic. He also spent two years investigating armed groups in Latin America for the global security department at Facebook before returning to Texas journalism. Baddour holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has lived in Argentina, Kazakhstan and Colombia and speaks fluent Spanish.
The state has issued only two new coal mining permits in 10 years to a company with a controversial environmental legacy.
The policy has been denounced in lawsuits and petitions, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality denies that it exists.
One company, Targa Resources, vented more than 500,000 pounds of toxins into the air during 17 reported events over a week-long period of extreme heat.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans on dredging a superfund site in order to complete a massive Gulf Coast terminal for oil tankers.
Recent “upsets” like tripped compressors, pressure loss and freezing weather resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations.
Regulators say the company fixed flaws at Freeport LNG which led compressed methane to burst from a pipe and catch fire.
Oil sector advocates pushed hard against an ozone nonattainment designation, which would have required oilfield emissions reductions.
A century of enterprise brought the river to its brink. Now, authorities are “praying for a hurricane” as reservoirs dwindle and populations boom on both sides of the Mexico-Texas border.
Deepwater terminals in the Gulf would fuel output and growth despite the Biden administration's promises of steep emissions cuts.
Environmentalists have seized on water supply as a “chokehold” to block fossil fuels on the rugged South Texas coast.