The Environmental Protection Agency has a tendency to walk away from its own research suggesting that fracking pollutes drinking water. A Congressional hearing scheduled for today will look into why that is. The hearing, called “Lessons Learned: EPA’s Investigations of Hydraulic Fracturing,” will be held jointly by the House Science,…
A powerful ex-oil industry executive has proposed a new energy plan for Texas, and it may not surprise you to learn that his plan involves oil. Lots and lots of oil. Leonardo Maugeri used to be a top executive at Eni, a company that has the double honor of being…
Luminant, the Dallas-based electricity generator, doesn’t have the greenest public image. It’s aging fleet of coal-fueled power plants includes some of the dirtiest in the country. It pumps millions and millions of tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Then, when pushed to modernize its coal plants,…
Get your tissues ready: Exxon Mobil gives some of its money to charities in Africa, according to a lengthy report in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News. The DMN politely explains that Exxon has a “complicated” relationship with Africa. On the one hand, critics say that Exxon isn’t transparent about where its…
It doesn’t take much to impress a water engineer. For Robert Mace, an administrator at the Texas Water Development Board, the highlight of the year was gulping down a tall glass of lukewarm water. “It could have used a couple of ice cubes,” he says, but otherwise it was clean…
Grand Park, Frisco’s planned $23-million, 275-acre paradise of the outer-ring ‘burbs, will probably be contaminated with lead, and staffers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality know it, according to documents and emails obtained by Frisco Unleaded. As we’ve reported before, the park’s lake and water features will be fed…
Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has co-sponsored legislation that would establish a national historic park on the moon, to commemorate the United States’ initial moon landings and to protect those sites from future commercial moon explorers. In other words: Even on the moon, location, location, location…
We can argue and cheat and take all the money we want based on all the secret side deals we can surreptitiously sign, but that doesn’t mean anyone will want to frack us: That’s the lesson from the latest numbers produced by state regulators, which show natural-gas production continuing its…
Some 285 miles above the Earth’s surface, a pair of NASA satellites can measure changes in groundwater levels at river-basin scale. And what they’re telling us about Texas and much of the South is disturbing. The satellites are identifying hot spots that blanket East Texas and much of the Panhandle,…
William Wylly Lamar is something of a rock star amongst readers of sites like HerpNation.com and WildHerps.com. His reptile-capturing skills — we’re talking herpetology here, folks — are unparalleled, as is his knowledge. He wrote the book on venomous snakes. Several books, actually, including his magnum opus, the two-volume The…
It’s no secret that North Texas is lusting after Oklahoma’s water. Here we are struggling to quench a thirsty and growing population, while our neighbor to the north hogs its bountiful supply of H2O, which is roughly 10 times its projected need. The Tarrant Regional Water District made the first…
Andrew Beal isn’t your typical banker. For starters, he’s a lot richer. He’s No. 43 on Forbes’ list of the country’s richest people, worth an estimated $8.5 billion. And he’s always been less interested in conspicuous displays of wealth than in things like rockets, poker strategy and mathematical theory. His…
The city of Frisco plans to build a 275-acre, $23 million “Grand Park.” It will be a regional attraction, a center to the city, replete with a festival green, a park for the kiddos and a “grand promenade” reaching out into a man-made lake with fountains of cool water. The…
Landowners along the nearly 500-mile southern section of the Keystone XL pipeline say contractors have been excavating long-buried lengths of pipe to repair apparent defects. They’ve documented stakes jutting from turned-up dirt near the pipeline right-of-way through East Texas that read, “anomaly,” “dent” and “weld.” They’ve seen sections of excavated…
For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. This…
When preservationists began lobbying Sylvan 30 developer Brent Jackson to return the Alamo Plaza sign to its home along Fort Worth Avenue, this isn’t what they had in mind. From the Sylvan 30 website: We’ve heard you and we agree: The Alamo Plaza sign will stay at Sylvan | Thirty…
First, the good news: Crazy ants don’t sting. They do sometimes bite, but the pain is mild, and it fades quickly. Even better, they drive out their stinging cousins, fire ants, which have been tormenting Texans for decades. Now, the bad news: When entomologists say “crazy,” they mean it. “When…
First, the good news. According to a report just released by the American Lung Association, the air in Dallas-Fort Worth has gotten considerably cleaner in recent years. The average number of days with unhealthy levels of ozone has been cut in half over the past decade, and the concentration of…
Back in March, the Keystone XL pipeline’s approval looked practically assured. Construction of the 1,179-mile leviathan, connecting Alberta’s tar sand mines with Texas Gulf Coast refiners, was already well underway in Texas. The State Department said Canadian tar sands production would proceed apace, with or without the pipeline. By rail…
The West Nile virus is officially back. Public health officials got their first confirmation of that last week when mosquito pools in Richardson tested positive for the disease. Today, Highland Park announced a positive test of its own. Dallas County is already urging residents to use insect repellant, drain standing…
Joe Barton, the Republican Congressman representing Arlington and its environs, has never been shy about expressing his skepticism about global warming. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he launched an investigation into a pair of studies that documented a dramatic spike in global temperatures, sparred with Al…
There was a minor furor in the media last year when a study conducted by a researcher at Standford’s medical school concluded that organic fruits and vegetables are no healthier than their conventionally raised counterparts. This wasn’t quite as newsworthy as the headlines made it sound, since the study was…
