Environment
Gulf Watch: Life in the Dead Zone
From Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies. A version of this story also appears at The Huffington Post. For the hundreds of t...Read More
A ‘Partial Victory’ for Texas Streams
TCEQ votes to keep strong bacteria standard (for now)
Sometimes shit doesn’t roll down hill. Sometimes shit just stays where it’s at. That was the case Wednesday when the three Texas Commission on Environmental...Read More
Refuge From Responsibility
Paul Bruckwicki is standing on a hill between a grass-covered Army landfill and a creek called Harrison Bayou. Groundwater monitoring wells skirt the edge of th...Read More
Whose Water Is It, Anyway?
Mostly, that's decided by appointees who aren't accountable to the voters.
Before the summer of 2009, Bob Wynne could stand on his expansive deck high above Lake Travis and look out over flat, shimmering water. It was the perfect surfa...Read More
At Meeting Today, TCEQ Stays in Big Coal’s Corner
Commisioners gives Las Brisas petcoke plant time to fix mistakes
Updated below Even as EPA formally killed Texas’ “flexible” permitting program today, the Perry-appointed commissioners voted 3-0 2-0 to allow the develop...Read More
Water Shares
Author's Note
Imagine this: Your new neighbors install a powerful pump in their water well, and your well— your drinking water—dries up. In Texas, you would have no legal...Read More
Gulf Coast Nuclear Plants at Risk From BP Oil Spill
Watchdog groups are warning about the BP oil spill’s potential damage to Gulf and Atlantic coast nuclear power plants that use seawater to cool pumps and ...Read More
Big Day Tomorrow for TCEQ
The Texas Observer publishes daily online and biweekly in print. Our premier reporting appears first in the magazine and is posted online over the next two week...Read More
Waterworld 2011
When we consider whether creatures live on other planets, the first question is always the same: Is there water? In poor countries, people fight and die over it...Read More