Since 1954
Mezabahnur Masum is a journalist covering energy, environment, and public-interest issues. His work has also appeared in The Diplomat, The Oklahoman, The Arizona Republic, and Oklahoma Voice. He is a co-founder and former executive editor of Dallas Barta, a Bangla-language newspaper serving the Bangladeshi community in North Texas.
The state's retail heat-advisory rule exempts municipal utilities or electric cooperatives. For those providers, federal data shows final notices continued through summer while actual disconnections varied sharply from one utility to another.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The state grid was built on the assumption that demand would fall at night. As hotter evenings and around-the-clock power use erase that drop, the system is being pushed in ways its original design did not fully anticipate.
The booming city's transit predicament is not unique; it is a local expression of a statewide structural problem.
When drought cycles outpace infrastructure planning, a water emergency is not a surprise—it’s a forecast.