Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Rural Voters Stepped on the Gas for Trump Across the Texas Oil Patch

2Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

3A House Divided

4As Democrats Divebomb, the Texas Legislature Remains as White and Male as Ever

5Texas Democrats Thought 2020 Would Be a Banner Year. Instead, It Was a Catastrophe.

6Millennials and Gen Zers are Breaking Voter Turnout Records in Texas

Most Recent in Environment:

1Texas Has Elected A Climate Change Denier to the Railroad Commission

2Illegal Air Pollution is Skyrocketing in Texas, But State Regulators are Ignoring Complaints

3Why is Michael Bloomberg Giving $2.6 Million to Elect a Railroad Commissioner in Texas?

4One Texas-Sized Loophole is Letting Lone Star Polluters Off the Hook

5Houston, Let People Walk

6Claiming Major Superfund ‘Success,’ Trump EPA Focused on Completing Cleanups, Not Climate Planning

Most Recent in Border:

1Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

25,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

3Mexico Turns To Television And Radio For Remote Learning

4New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

5El ducto del coronavirus

6The Coronavirus Pipeline

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1How Texas Jails Avoid Investigations of Inmate Deaths

2I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

3After the Deaths of Two Soldiers at Fort Hood, the Navajo Nation Wants Answers

4Trump’s Favorite Texas Sheriff Faces Re-Election Amid a Spike in Deaths at His Jail

5Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

6When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence

Most Recent in Education:

1Efforts to Save What’s Left of Mary Allen Seminary Reveal The Challenges of Preserving Black Placemaking in Texas

2Texas Has the Widest Digital Divide in the Nation. What Does that Mean for the School Year?

3The New Ensemble

4Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

5Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas

6‘Almost Akin to a Political Coup’: Houston Teachers Fight Back Against State Takeover of HISD

Most Recent in Health Care:

1For Families That Lost Loved Ones or Jobs to the Pandemic, Thanksgiving Carries an Extra Weight This Year

2How We Got Here

3A West Texas Nursing Home Sent Its COVID-Positive Residents Elsewhere. Now Two of Them Are Dead.

4The Forgotten Children of Texas

5I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

6Achieving Vision Zero in Houston Isn’t Going To Happen One Intersection at a Time

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

2Texas Observer Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger Reflects on 65 Years of Publication

3How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms

4Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

5Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform

6American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

Most Recent in Books:

1Remembering a Jewish Upbringing in Meyerland, Texas

2How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

3A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession

4Improbable, Prophetic Houston

5Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners

6‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right

Most Recent in Features:

1Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home

3San Antonio Embraces Mandaean Refugees

4The Ghosts of Jefferson

5Little Arthouse on the Prairie

6The Clothes that Make the Man

Most Recent in Essay:

1What the Black Lives Matter Protests Mean for East Texas

2Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

3What’s a Bookstore for?

4Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes

5In a Pandemic, Poor Defendants Could Pay With Their Lives

6Loneliness in the Age of Coronavirus

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: The Essential Women of Austin

2Eye on Texas: The Black Yearbook

3Eye on Texas: Border Tuner

4Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

5Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

6Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas

2Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

3Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

4Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

5Parallel Planes

Articles tagged: coal mining

Freeport LNG plant in Quintana.

by Naveena Sadasivam

The Five Foulest Texas Environmental Stories of 2016

Lowlights include failing to track chemical spills during floods and rejecting the link between earthquakes and fracking.

Tue, Dec 20, 2016 |

Thanks to investigative reporting, this year we learned of new ways the powerful in this state are messing with Texas. From failing to oversee toxic waste injec...Read More

by Naveena Sadasivam

Green Groups Urge Lawmakers: Don’t Leave Taxpayers on the Hook for Coal Cleanup

Tue, Aug 23, 2016 |

Following an Observer investigation into loose coal regulations that could put taxpayers on the hook for mine cleanup, green groups are demanding change....Read More

by Naveena Sadasivam

Mine Games

With little more than a promise, the Texas Railroad Commission is trusting a struggling coal industry to pay for the cost of cleaning up old mines.

Thu, Aug 18, 2016 |

In mid-2014, Texas’ biggest utility, Energy Future Holdings, was about to file for bankruptcy, and Texas regulators suddenly had a big problem on their hands...Read More

Luis Martinez, a Maverick County resident who opposes the Dos Republicas mine, speaks out against the TCEQ's decision to grant the mine a wastewater permit Wednesday. Nearby Elm Creek runs through Martinez's property.

by Naveena Sadasivam

TCEQ: Contested Coal Mine Can Release Wastewater Into Drinking Supply

Locals called the environmental regulators' decision ‘unconscionable.’

Wed, Jul 6, 2016 |

Locals called the TCEQ's decision "unconscionable," saying that wastewater from the mine will pollute drinking water for Maverick County residents....Read More

Bobby Inman Blames the Unions

by Forrest Wilder

Mon, Apr 19, 2010

Updated below Bobby Ray Inman now seems to be blaming labor unions for the West Virginia mining disaster that killed 29 people at the non-union Upper Big Branch...Read More

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