This is encouraging news.
In a sign that Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is not prepared to concede Texas to the Republicans in the fall, his campaign announced an intensive voter registration effort beginning [Saturday] in the state's four largest media markets -- Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.The kickoff will be a training effort for volunteers to seek out the unregistered Texans who fit the profile of a Democratic voter. The effort could affect several down-ballot races, including a couple of Tarrant County state House contests, Democratic analyst Kelly Fero said Friday.
"Texas is definitely in play, more so down the ballot in state Senate and House races than in the presidential," said Fero, who's not aligned in this year's presidential sweepstakes. "But the presidential race will significantly shape some of the down-ballot races and create a tide that could sweep incumbents out of office and challengers into office."
The smart money back in March held that once the Democratic primary ended, whoever got the presidential nomination would need Texas only for its deep-pocket donors. The drive to register new Democratic-leaning voters, being conducted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, might mean the GOP can't have Texas' 34 electoral votes that easily. But state Republican Party spokesman Hans Klingler brushed aside the notion that any Democratic presidential nominee has achance to take Texas this year. The state has been rock-solid Republican in every presidential race since 1980.
"As [then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Tony Sanchez showed in 2002, you can spend millions of dollars on voter registration in Texas and still come up double-digits behind the Republicans in Texas," Klingler said.
The downballot race issue is one worth keeping in mind. My concern is that whatever new voters Obama will turn out in November will primarily be people who are there to vote for him, and don't have much interest in other races. The big dropoff in the primary from the Presidential race to the Senate and other statewide races is a potential danger sign. I don't think it's necessarily going to be a problem - at the very least, I know there will be money spent in Harris County to push the straight-ticket-Democratic message - but it is something to pay attention to. A boost in turnout is only beneficial if it helps all candidates.
Speaking of turnout boosts, this BOR diary, which builds off the models created by Poblano, shows how various turnout scenarios radically change the landscape for Obama. I'm hesitant to invest too much in this - we all remember how new voters were going to carry Kinky Friedman to the Governor's mansion in 2006, right? - but it's hard to see record-breaking primary turnouts in state after state (Indiana, like Texas, had more Democratic votes cast in their primary than John Kerry received in the 2004 general election) and not believe that this time it's different. Read it and see what you think.
Finally, check out Matt Stoller on the network Obama has built nationwide. There's a lot there to feel good about, and more than a little to be queasy about. Either way, there's a lot to think about.
I love stories about demographics.
By 2050, the area between Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth will become a single "mega-region" containing 70 percent of the state's population, city planning experts said at a national forum on Friday.Experts attending the Washington conference, dubbed America 2050, said the Texas mega-region, which will be one of 10 in the U.S., will house 24.5 million of the state's projected 35 million residents.
[Regional Planning] Association president Bob Yaro said the Texas Triangle is different from the nation's other regions.Large swaths of undeveloped land, he said, exist between the metropolitan areas in Texas, unlike Southern California or the Northeast.
Because the distances between the Texas cities are too great for automobile commuting and too small for cost-effective air links, he said, high-speed rail should be an important new approach.
If there's some way that private companies could make money off of it, they would be interested in building a high-speed rail network, said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But he added that the prospect of profit seems unlikely unless the firms are allowed to use existing rail lines. That, he said, "ain't going to happen because we're having enough trouble moving freight."
Yaro said he was impressed by Metro's light-rail project."The fact that Houston's there, moving ahead with this thing in what has been until recently the most automobile-dominated place in the country is really a big step forward," he said.
We already knew we had bad air quality in Texas. The reason for it is simple: There's very little incentive for the polluters to clean up their act.
Texans cannot count on existing state and federal laws to protect them from risky concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in the air, according to a report released Thursday.With 14 "toxic hot spots" across the state, the report's authors, representing four environmental groups, called for lawmakers and regulators to establish stricter and more enforceable standards for those compounds known as hazardous air pollutants. What's more, they said, industry leaders should make pollution reduction their top priority.
"Solutions to the problem exist," said Ramon Alvarez, an Austin-based scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups participating in the report. "But we are lacking leadership."
[...]
Texas, meanwhile, does not have its own regulatory caps for toxics. The state uses health-based guidelines during the permitting process but does not treat them as enforceable limits.
As a result, Corpus Christi and Port Neches have exceeded the state's guidelines for air toxics for a decade or more, according to the environmental groups.
"If anyone thinks the federal government or state government is cleaning up these toxic hot spots, think again," said Ilan Levin, an Austin-based attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, one of the report's authors.
To reduce ambient toxics, the environmental groups want regulators and industries to improve monitoring and want state and federal lawmakers to require the clean up of areas with unsafe levels of chemicals in the air.
They also call for industries to support "reasonable regulatory proposals" instead of fighting them with lobbying firms and trade associations.
Last year the Legislature introduced at least 15 bills relating to stricter regulations of air toxics, but none of them passed.
"It's up to the will of the Legislature," said Michael Honeycutt, the chief toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is responsible for regulating air pollution.
Fifteen separate bills were filed in the House addressing toxic air emissions, all by Democrats, but Environmental Regulations Committee Chair, Dennis Bonnen, refused to hear a single one. He also threatened to kill his own clean-air bill rather than allow a floor vote on toxic air amendments.
I have not been following the story of the raid on the FLDS compound very closely - read Grits if you don't already for some excellent coverage on the topic. I did read this story about their ad hoc PR campaign with some interest, and thought this bit was worth mentioning:
Plural-marriage families exist mostly in the shadows, said Mary Batchelor, a co-founder of Principle Voices, a Utah-based polygamy advocacy group. She said families typically don't speak publicly for fear they'll be prosecuted for bigamy or lose their children to state authorities."It's scary, but ultimately, we decided to speak up and let the chips fall where they may," said Batchelor, now a regular on the polygamy media circuit. "When there is a lot of mystery about something, then people's imaginations start to fill in the gaps and they tend to go darker and darker. That leads to a lot of misperceptions."
I'm not going to claim I really understand their perspective, but in the absence of any credible claims of child abuse, and it appears there are none here, then I don't see how these people's business is any of mine, or any of the state's.
If the calls turn out to be fake, some criminal defense lawyers said they doubt any criminal charges that may be filed in the case would stand up in court.An anonymous call is not sufficient to grant a search and seizure, Houston lawyer Charles Portz said. "That's not probable cause. What other proof do they have?" he said.
"Are they DNA testing for sexual contact or to see who the parents are?" Portz asked.
Jim Harrington, head of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said it will matter if the original call was legitimate or a hoax.
"The officials have a duty to investigate and make sure that there's a reasonableness and the credibility to that call," he said. "The general rule is that you cannot have a warrant based solely on an anonymous call. There has to be other factors that come into play that demonstrate the reliability of the anonymous call. Otherwise you could imagine the havoc from people filing these false (reports) all the time."
State officials are confusing family law standards governing the interests of children with criminal conduct involving abuse with children, Harrington said. The state is misguided to separate children from mothers instead of removing older men suspected of sexually abusing children, he said.
But some law school professors disagree.
An anonymous call that turns out to be a hoax "is completely after the fact and has no legal relevance," said Sandra Carnahan, who teaches criminal procedure at Houston's South Texas College of Law. "The issue will be whether the (search) warrant is valid on its face."
The judge may have had enough reason to sign a warrant if the anonymous caller, whether legitimate or not, provided ample detail about conditions inside the compound, Carnahan said.
Jack Sampson, a professor in the University of Texas Law School's Children's Rights Clinic, said CPS workers were obligated to investigate the allegations as a civil matter. Whether it turns into a criminal issue is to be decided.
"We don't know who the father is. But we do know that if the father is more than two years older (than the underage mother), that there's been a crime," Sampson said.
CPS spokesman Darrell Azar said it doesn't matter if the original call turns out to be a hoax.
"What matters is what we found there. We found a number of children as young as 13 who were being married and were giving birth to children and who were sexually abused and the judge agreed," Azar said.
"So it doesn't really matter what happens with that situation. Once we get a report, we're obligated -- legally and morally -- to investigate," he said.
Given how many young kids are now being separated from their families, I just hope we can get this mess untangled before we do any real damage. Grits has a personal take on this, and points to this interesting post from a self-professed "feminist Mormon housewife" as well. Check 'em out.
From last week, a proposal to connect the wind farms in West Texas to the rest of the state.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees most of the state's power grid, was asked by the Public Utility Commission to study how best to get the power to the markets that need it the most. After considering hundreds of options, ERCOT narrowed it down to five possibilities.The least expensive would cost $2.95 billion to accommodate up to 12,000 MW of wind power, but it's not as flexible to handle future growth as another 12,000 MW plan that would cost $3.78 billion.
The most expensive plan would accommodate 24,800 MW of wind power and cost $6.38 billion.
New transmission lines from West Texas wind projects would not reach Houston but most likely connect to Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. The cost of such projects would be distributed to all Texas rate payers, regardless of their locations.
The report was submitted to the Public Utility Commission, which is expected to review it in the coming weeks.
From the office of Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson:
The 22nd annual Adopt-A-Beach Spring Cleanup will take place Saturday, April 26th at eight sites in the Houston area. The all-volunteer is coordinated through the Adopt-A-Beach Program of the Texas General Land Office."Join us for a great day at the beach with thousands of other Texans who care enough to show it through their actions," Patterson said.
Volunteers can register at any of the eight check-in sites beginning at 8:30 a.m. on April 26th. Each volunteer will be given data cards, gloves, pencils and trash bags. All volunteers are advised to wear closed-toe shoes and bring sunscreen and plenty of drinking water.
Texans who are not able to attend the cleanup can help keep their beaches clean by making a tax-deductible donation online at www.texasadoptabeachorg. There are several different Adopt-A-Beach sponsorship levels ranging from $25 to $25,000, allowing both individuals and corporations to contribute to this major cleanup effort.
The all-volunteer event is coordinated through the Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Program. Statewide coastal cleanups are held every spring and fall.
Texas beaches receive large amounts of marine debris due to a convergence of currents in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1986, more than 365,000 Texas Adopt-A-Beach volunteers have picked up more than 6,900 tons of trash along the Texas coast. Volunteers record data on the trash to learn more about the causes of marine debris and to help mitigate pollution along Texas' 367 miles of coastline.
Local news media sponsors for the cleanup include the following Houston stations: KHOU-TV (CBS Channel 11), KXLN-TV (Channel 45 Univision), Clear Channel radio stations KTRH-AM, KPRC-AM and KBME-AM and KLOL-FM.
Statewide sponsors for the Adopt-A-Beach Spring Cleanup are National Oilwell Varco, Royal Caribbean, ExxonMobil, Stormwater Solutions, Halliburton and Starbucks. In-kind donations will be provided by Keep Texas Beautiful.
The General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Cleanups are held rain or shine!
For a complete listing of cleanup sites for the upcoming Spring Cleanup, to learn how you can participate, or for additional information on the Adopt-A-Beach Program, please visit www.texasadoptabeach.org or contact the GLO at 1-877-TX COAST.
The Kenedy Ranch wind farm project, which is currently under litigation, picked up some editorial support over the weekend.
Every pound of coal or natural gas that can be taken out of the equation for producing electricity has to be counted as a plus. That's the basic reason why construction of wind farms in Kenedy County should be viewed as an overall positive. Against the possible negatives -- as yet unproven danger to migratory or endangered birds, or the impact of roads and the turbines that it takes to capture wind power -- the greater weight should be given to subtracting carbon dioxide-producing fuels from the business of producing power.The two sides of the argument have been getting an airing lately in the region as two projects begin in Kenedy County, an $800 million project on property owned by the the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation, and a $400 million project on the adjoining property owned by the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust.
Together, the two projects will have, at completion, slightly more than 300 giant turbines churning out close to 500 megawatts of electricity. That's electricity that could power hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas. And the key part is that it could be done without burning another chunk of coal.
Opponents of the projects, chiefly funded by the neighboring King Ranch, have been mounting an aggressive campaign to stop, or slow, the projects. Their organization, the Coastal Habitat Alliance, have been arguing to whoever will hear them, including the Nueces County Commissioners Court, that the projects need a better review than they've been getting so far.
Ever get caught driving behind an old clunker that was spewing enough exhaust it made you cough even with all your windows rolled up? Ever wonder why something couldn't be done about such an obvious detriment to the environment? Well, there is something can be done, and it's been very successful so far.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments, which administers the old vehicle voucher program on behalf of the state, has gotten 12,000 applications from people seeking money to help replace their old cars and trucks.If all 12,000 applications were to be approved, they would exceed the first $30 million that the state has allocated for the program, officials said. No date has been set, but the council will probably need to quit taking applications in a few weeks.
A second phase of the program should begin in September.
"It might be a few weeks before we have to cut it off; it might be a month," said Lara Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the council of governments. "But it's winding down."
Last week, the council of governments sent an e-mail to area dealers advising them that the program would no longer accept applications after Friday. But officials later determined that 1,300 vouchers that had been approved had expired, and those funds were still available. Consumers have to spend their vouchers within 30 days.
[...]
The program, which began accepting applications in December, is aimed at lower-income residents of the Dallas, Houston and Austin areas who drive vehicles that are at least 10 years old. People who meet income limits - $30,630 for an individual and $72,390 for a family of five - may be eligible for $3,000 vouchers that they can use on new or late-model vehicles. They must buy cars and trucks that cost $25,000 or less.
Dallas, Houston and Austin do not meet federal clean-air standards. Since older vehicles emit up to 30 times as much pollution as newer ones, the areas hope to improve air quality - and get credits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - by getting old vehicles off the road.
About 5,000 vouchers have been granted so far from the 12,000 applications received in the Dallas area. Recipients can take the vouchers - which increase to $3,500 if they're buying a hybrid vehicle - to participating car dealers for a new vehicle or a used one up to three model years old. Their old cars and trucks are supposed to be taken to salvage yards.
There's a lot of interest in the program, officials said.
"Love it, love it, love it," said state Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, who sponsored the bill that created the program. "This is an excellent, excellent start to making a positive difference."
The state has $100 million available for the old car voucher program - the largest amount in the nation, Mr. Averitt said. In December, it allocated half of that money to programs in Dallas, Houston and Austin, and it will give those areas the remaining funds in September, he said.
"The EPA continues to tell us we have the most aggressive and best-funded program in the country," he said. "There's not even a close second - and that includes California."
Another skirmish in the battle over wind farms on the Kenedy Ranch.
The legal battle over two large and controversial wind energy projects on the South Texas coast escalated Tuesday when the Coastal Habitat Alliance asked a federal judge in Austin to halt construction.Citing the threat of irreparable environmental harm, lawyers for the alliance, a loose coalition of opponents to the massive projects, asked U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel to issue a preliminary injunction against the developers.
"The wind farms threaten a particularly precious, vulnerable area surrounding the Laguna Madre," reads the motion. "If (construction) is allowed to continue, this will cause one of the most serious environmental disasters ever to occur on the Texas Coast."
The group's 10 members include the King Ranch, the American Bird Conservancy, the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation and the Coastal Bend Audubon Society.
Its lawyer, Jim Blackburn, said another motion seeking swifter action likely will follow.
"Essentially, we are filing this to get it on the record, and I expect we'll come back and file for a temporary restraining order later this week, asking for an immediate hearing to stop everything," he said.
That Caller story notes that the CHA's state lawsuit was dismissed; the federal suit is still ongoing. I missed the news about that and can't find any stories now. Guess the CHA took me off their press release list - I didn't get anything from them about this story, either. Alas.
Trey Fleming, the Democratic candidate for HD135 in November, is hosting a Texas Independence Day party on March 1. It's a barbecue, of course, as befitting the event it commemorates. Click the link and enter your email address to receive an Evite invitation. Enjoy!
You may recall that a group of swingers in the city of Duncanville filed suit against the city to overturn a new law they passed that would ban sex clubs such as theirs. Well, the city has responded by saying "You sue me? I sue you!"
The city of Duncanville wants a judge to declare the Cherry Pit swingers club a public nuisance and close it down.Jim Trulock, who runs the club in his home, sued the city Dec. 12 over a new ordinance that bans sex clubs. Duncanville filed its answer Monday and countersued Mr. Trulock.
[...]
Mr. Trulock's "use of the premises as a sex club is detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the city of Duncanville," the city's filing says. Mr. Trulock "does not have any policy or measures in place to safeguard against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and thus the activities at the premises pose a risk to the public health."
Mr. Trulock's attorney, Ed Klein, said the city is trying to regulate private acts in a private home. The ordinance violates his client's privacy and due process rights, he said.
Mr. Klein also contends that the ordinance is so broad and vague that it could criminalize the sexual behavior of almost everyone in Duncanville.
The city's countersuit asks that the court order the Cherry Pit to close and fine Mr. Trulock $1,000 a day if he refuses. A judge has not set a hearing on the request.
I'm not sure why this story amuses me as much as it does, but it does.
Citing public safety and concerns about underage drinking, more than 60 people showed up at a town-hall meeting Thursday night to learn how to protest Six Flags' application to sell alcohol at its parks in Arlington."I don't know how alcohol sales can be controlled with that many people at Six Flags," Linda Jaquess of Arlington said during the meeting.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission decided to hold the informational meeting after receiving more than 600 phone calls since Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Hurricane Harbor posted signs Dec. 17 saying the parks were applying for liquor licenses.
While the meeting's intent was to educate the public on how to formally protest Six Flags' application, residents spent most of the time voicing their dismay that a mixed-beverage permit could be issued to parks and questioning the New York-based company's reasons for wanting to sell beer at the family-friendly venues.
Although the panel of TABC officials asked that comments and questions be related to the protest process, many attendees voiced their concerns and opinions about Six Flags' decision to apply for the license."I feel this is totally unfair to families and children," said Arlington resident Linda Rosenberry. "It's just putting your own customers at risk."
As a season-pass holder and father of two young girls, Bart McDonald said he plans to file a protest because he is concerned for the safety of his kids and others if alcohol is sold at Six Flags.
"To me, it's a safety issue and a health issue," said McDonald, pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington. "If someone gets drunk, it will affect the peace of the park."
The theme park company maintained that "moms and dads" are the ones who have asked Six Flags to offer beer and that it will have strict controls in place to sell beer responsibly.
John Bement, senior vice president of in-park services, said Six Flags' policy is to sell one beer at a time to one person with a valid ID.
For example, a man cannot buy two beers, one for himself and one for his wife. Instead, the woman must buy her own beer with an ID, Bement said.
I should note here that I hadn't realized they didn't sell beer at Six Flags parks. I think that's probably because I assumed that if they did, it would be crappy (Bud/Bud Lite/Miller Lite) and overpriced, so I never bothered to inquire. So much for that.
No, we're not talking politics here, but the goal is still very laudable.
The city of Austin is hoping a new plan will help reduce its landfill waste to nothing.The city has hired a California firm, Gary Liss & Associates, to write a zero-waste plan -- a strategy to reduce to zero the amount of garbage sent to landfills by reusing, recycling and composting materials instead.
Several cities, such as Seattle and San Francisco, and countries either have or are writing zero-waste plans.
The goal of Austin's plan will be to reduce the garbage sent to landfills by 20 percent per capita by 2012 and to achieve zero waste -- an international standard set by the U.N. Environmental Accord -- by 2040.
[...]
Austin Solid Waste Services Director Willie Rhodes said that besides the zero-waste plan, the city will also boost recycling with the opening of a single-stream recycling facility in Southeast Austin in the next two years. That program will let homeowners place various recyclable materials in one big curbside bin rather than having to sort them.
In a broader sense, I don't think we're really going to be successful at recycling until we 1) get more people to think of recycling as the default option, with throwing away the fallback, and 2) just generally make it a heck of a lot easier to recycle. That latter means things like making recycling bins at least as ubiquitous as garbage cans, especially in places like offices and eateries, where aluminum cans and plastic bottles are consumed in large quantities. The former means running a massive PR blitz to persuade people to recycle, as was done to persuade them to not smoke and not drive drunk. Perhaps the venerable Don't Mess With Texas campaign can be repurposed for this. This has to come first, as there needs to be pressure applied for the idea of Recycling Everywhere, and this seems the logical way to do it. How that's done, and who pays for it are details to be argued over, but I think the need and the benefits are clear. Who's with me on this?
You may recall that the city of Duncanville recently decided to git tuff on swingers. Well, the swingers are now fighting back in court.
A Duncanville swinger sued the city Wednesday, contending that a new ordinance banning sex clubs violates his privacy and due process rights.Jim Trulock, 59, and his partner, 29-year-old Julie M. Norris, call themselves advocates for the swinging lifestyle. On weekends, they turn their home near Cedar Ridge Drive and Interstate 20 into the Cherry Pit, where guests can mingle, dance and have sex.
Last month, the Duncanville City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance deeming sex clubs in private homes a public nuisance. City officials say they were acting in response to complaints about the Cherry Pit.
"Where it crossed the line was they took a private act and made it public," city spokeswoman Tonya Lewis has said.
[...]
The new ordinance classifies sex clubs as a public nuisance. Officials also contend that the Cherry Pit is an unlicensed business operating in a residential area, Ms. Lewis said.
The Cherry Pit's attorney, Ed Klein, said the city is trying to regulate private acts in a private home. The ordinance is unconstitutionally vague and overly broad, according to the lawsuit, filed in Dallas County Court-at-Law No. 2.
"The ordinance as written criminalizes the behavior of a substantial portion of the population of Duncanville who seek to engage in sexual activity," the suit says, "as well as each and every person who may be present on the premises at the time in question."
The suit alleges that a man interested in sex with his wife could be prosecuted. And if the encounter occurred in a hotel, every guest could face criminal action, the suit says.
Mr. Klein asked for a temporary restraining order to prevent the city from enforcing the ordinance while the lawsuit proceeds. Judge King Fifer denied the request.
Duncanville, which proclaims itself "the perfect blend of family, community and business," is an unlikely venue for a neighborhood swinger club. The city of 36,000, just southwest of Dallas, has about 50 places of worship and not a single registered sexually oriented business.Other cities have wrestled with the same issue.
Phoenix, for example, prohibited live sexual performances in 1998, effectively outlawing swinger parties. An appeals court upheld the law in 2003, and Duncanville used it as a blueprint when passing a ban last month.
Well, I can't say this is a surprise.
The Coastal Habitat Alliance has taken its fight against two wind farms to court.The alliance, a group of 11 organizations including the King Ranch and Frontera Audubon Society, filed federal and state lawsuits Tuesday hoping to halt the construction of two wind farms in Kenedy County, or at least gain input in the projects. The group says the wind farms will affect environmentally sensitive wetlands and possibly lead to bird kills.
The federal lawsuit alleges that state officials and developers are violating the federal Coastal Zone Management Act by building the farms without an environmental review or permit.
The organization also filed another lawsuit in a Texas court, objecting to the Public Utility Commission of Texas' recent refusal to grant the alliance "intervenor" status in the projects. The commission has granted permission for the construction of an electric-transmission line that will connect to the wind farms.
"In both (lawsuits), we're asking to be heard at the Public Utility Commission," said Elyse Yates, a spokeswoman for the alliance.
Defendants in the federal lawsuit are General Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, wind developers PPM Energy and Babcock & Brown and the Public Utility Commission's three commissioners.
Texas adopted a coastal management plan, in compliance with federal law, in the 1990s, and that plan called for environmental reviews for any electricity generating plants, the federal lawsuit says. When the state repealed a law requiring all electric plants to have permits, officials didn't include that change in updates to the coastal management plan, the suit says.
Therefore, electricity generating projects built on the coast without a permit remain in violation of federal law and the state's own plan, according to the document.
[...]
The Texas General Land Office will respond to the alliance's petition "in a timely manner," said office spokesman Jim Suydam in a statement.
Through the state suit, the alliance hopes to gain intervenor status in the project and request that environmental studies be conducted, Yates said.
A spokesman from Babcock & Brown, one of the two companies developing wind farms on Kenedy Ranch, said the lawsuit was "completely without merit." The farms would not pose harm to coastal wetlands or migrating birds, he said.
"Before we began construction on this project, we voluntarily completed three years of comprehensive wildlife studies," said spokesman Matt Dallas. The company concluded in these studies that endangered species and migrating birds wouldn't be harmed, he said.
The Public Utility Commission, another defendant in the lawsuits, denied the alliance "intervenor" status because the group didn't qualify, said commission spokesman Terry Hadley. Hadley said he couldn't comment further on the lawsuit because he hadn't reviewed it yet.
Following up on the earlier bloggage about the Texas Education Agency and its curious position on scientific neutrality, Bluedaze and PDiddie round up more reactions and commentary, to which I'll add Wonkette (never a good sign for a government agency to be blogged about by Wonkette), Wired News, and the Waco Trib's John Young:
When it comes to explaining human origins and early man, don't forget:The club came before fire.
Long before man figured out that lumber could be burned to illuminate and heat the cave, he knew that he could wield lumber to clobber his fellow man.
That was the case in Austin the other day in a 21st-century way.
A person whose job was illumination got clubbed.
UPDATE: The Chron jumps in as well.
Missed this from last week:
The state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.Chris Comer, who has been the Texas Education Agency's director of science curriculum for more than nine years, offered her resignation this month.
In documents obtained Wednesday through the Texas Public Information Act, agency officials said they recommended firing Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. But Comer said she thinks political concerns about the teaching of creationism in schools were behind what she describes as a forced resignation.
Agency officials declined to comment, saying it was a personnel issue.
Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation being given by Barbara Forrest, author of "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," a book that says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Forrest was also a key witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case concerning the introduction of intelligent design in a Pennsylvania school district. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities, saying, "FYI."
Agency officials cited the e-mail in a memo recommending her termination. They said forwarding the e-mail not only violated a directive for her not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review, "it directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science."
The memo adds, "Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."
I doubt it. This is pure politics, and the Statesman is right to call a spade a spade:
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism.This state has struggled for years with the ideological bent of the state school board, but lawmakers took away most of its power to infect education some years ago. Politicizing the Texas Education Agency, which oversees the education of children in public schools, would be a monumental mistake.
This isn't the space to explore the debate over creationism, intelligent design and evolution. Each approach should be fair game for critical analysis, so terminating someone for just mentioning a critic of intelligent design smacks of the dogma and purges in the Soviet era.
But then, this is a new and more political time at the state's education agency.
Why I support Mayor White's efforts to crack down on area polluters, in 25 words or less:
Some of Texas' biggest industries have an important ally in trying to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from ordering nationwide smog cuts: the state's top clean-air officials.
Rural Texas has a severe shortage of doctors.
Kent County has not had a doctor in 53 years.
"The last one we had died in 1954," County Judge Jim C. White said matter-of-factly. "When we need medical care we go to Lubbock or Abilene or to the district county hospital in (neighboring) Fisher County."The community of 734 residents, down from 859 in the 2000 Census, is not the only county in West Texas without a physician.
Twenty-seven other counties in the region do not have a physician, said Dr. Steven Berk, dean of the School of Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
"It is definitely a very critical problem," said Berk, who is interim vice president of the F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health at Health Sciences Center. "We have a shortage of doctors in the United States but it is more severe in West Texas."
The Office of Rural Community Affairs is aware of the severity of the physician shortage. That's why ORCA is offering stipends of up to $15,000 to physicians willing to work in a rural community for at least a year.
"We hope to get some doctors interested," said Theresa Cruz, director of the rural health division at ORCA. "We are seeing a downward trend of applicants. Most doctors, especially those just out of medical school, are not all that interested in moving to rural areas."
The Texas Health Service Corps Program has been around since 2001 and on average, the agency gets about five applicants a year, Cruz said. The deadline to apply for the stipends is May 28.
Berk said there are several reasons for the growing shortage of doctors everywhere.
First, the medical profession didn't recognize that a shortage was on the horizon until about five years ago.
In addition, young physicians don't want to work as many hours as their older peers.
And for rural areas, there is an additional problem. Fewer and fewer medical students are going into family medicine because they don't make as much money as they can in specialized medicine, Berk said.
Proposition 12, and the far-reaching changes in Texas civil law that it dragged behind it, was built on a foundation of mistruths and sketchy assumptions. The number of doctors in the state was not falling, it was steadily rising, according to Texas Medical Board data. There was little statistical evidence showing that frivolous lawsuits were a significant force driving increases in malpractice premiums.Perhaps the most insidious sleight of hand employed by Proposition 12 backers was their repeated insistence that medical malpractice insurance rates were somehow responsible for doctor shortages in rural Texas.
"Women in three out of five Texas counties do not have access to obstetricians. Imagine the hardship this creates for many pregnant women in our state," Gov. Rick Perry told a New York audience in October 2003 at the pro-tort-reform Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "The problem has not been a lack of compassion among our medical community, but a lack of protection from abusive lawsuits."
The campaign's promise, that tort reform would cause doctors to begin returning to the state's sparsely populated regions, has now been tested for four years. It has not proven to be true.
[...]
On a Texas map inside the beguiling-baby mailer, blood red marked the 152 counties in Texas that did not have obstetricians in 2003. Rural doctor shortages were kept front and center as the state's physicians, led by the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, campaigned for Proposition 12.
A flier printed by the TMA in English and Spanish and posted in waiting rooms across the state told patients that "152 counties in Texas now have no obstetrician. Wide swaths of Texas have no neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon. ... The primary culprit for this crisis is an explosion in awards for non-economic (pain and suffering) damages in liability lawsuits. ... vote "YES!" on 12!"
As of September 2007, the number of counties without obstetricians is unchanged--152 counties still have none, according to the Observer's examination of county-by-county data at the state Medical Board.
Nearly half of Texas counties--124, or 49 percent--have no obstetrician, neurosurgeon, or orthopedic surgeon. Those specialists aside, 21 Texas counties have no physician of any kind. That's one county worse than before Proposition 12 passed, when 20 counties had no doctor.
I love headlines like this: City Of Duncanville Cracking Down On Sex Parties. Who knew they had them? You can almost see the light bulb going on over Wayne Dolcefino's head. And I can't believe In the Pink hasn't covered this already.
I want to call your attention to this story about how Duncanville dealt with this matter, and see if any of it sounds familiar.
The Duncanville City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Tuesday night preventing the operation of sex clubs in residences in response to complaints from neighbors of a private swingers club.Council member Johnette Jameson said the ordinance was the result of years of complaints about activities at the home near Cedar Ridge Drive and Interstate 20. Although the city has regulations pertaining to sexually oriented businesses, it has not been able to document business activities at the home, which is in Ms. Jameson's district.
She said the ordinance is targeting public nuisances related to the Cherry Pit club rather than what people are doing as part of the club.
"We are not addressing what activities are going on," she said. "We're addressing the traffic. We have to be good neighbors to each other."
Mayor David Green agreed that nearby residents have been bothered by the influx of cars coming to the home.
"People can't find parking," he said. "It's really detracting from the neighborhood."
But one of the home's residents, Julie Norris, said she thinks city officials are disguising their attempts to regulate private behavior at her home by complaining about traffic.
"If it was about traffic, why are there only [no parking] signs in front of my house?" she asked.
Meet the chupacabra, such as it is.
The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in Cuero is not the mythical bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night that they had identified the hairless doglike creature.
San Antonio television station KENS provided a tissue sample from the animal for testing.
"The DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote (Canis latrans)," bioligist Mike Forstner said in a written statement. "This is probably the answer a lot of folks thought might be the outcome. I, myself, really thought it was a domestic dog, but the Cuero Chupacabra is a Texas Coyote."
[...]
Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.
"This is fun, not scary, but if people are worried about the chupacabra, it is probably even more important that we explain the mystery," he said. "Folks can fear what they don't understand, and a big part of the goal in science is to explain the natural world."
He said additional skin samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal's hair loss.
(With apologies to the folks at Zippidy Doo Da for the shameless appropriation of their post title.)
Great moments in headline writing: State report says Texas has too many reports. You can live a long time before getting a meatball like that.
Now, it's very easy to note a story like this and go into full-on snark mode, but before you get your Dave Barry on, the Report Of All Reports actually makes a pretty salient point:
In the past, the state regularly compiled a list of about 400 reports that agencies were required by the Legislature to produce. But the commission found more than 1,600, and state records administrator Michael Heskett is pretty sure his team hasn't found them all.Heskett's initial findings indicate more than 400 report requirements are obsolete, duplicative or not needed as frequently as currently required.
"At first, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of reporting requirements," Heskett said. "We haven't begun our evaluation yet. But I think we can reach our goal of eliminating the deadwood without compromising the need for accountability in our state agencies."
Agencies stand to save thousands of staff hours and tons of paper, although the commission hasn't estimated yet exactly how much of either, Heskett said.
In a typical legislative session, lawmakers call for about a dozen new reports to meet the requirements for a new law. Another 20 or so reports are attached to appropriations bills as a way of making sure allocated money is properly spent.
Unless these reports are repealed by the Legislature, agencies are required to prepare them, even if the need for the report -- or the agency -- no longer exists.
Via South Texas Chisme, the Public Utilities Commission has denied a request to halt construction of the Kenedy Ranch wind farm.
The Coastal Habitat Alliance, which includes King Ranch, Frontera Audubon Society and several other organizations, had petitioned for "intervenor" status in the construction of a transmission line that will connect two proposed wind farms to the electric grid.The two wind farms -- one being developed by PPM Energy and the other by Australia-based Babcock & Brown -- both are located on privately owned Kenedy Ranch, and so the alliance saw the PUC's public hearing as its only opportunity to stop the wind farms, representatives have said.
At its hearing Wednesday, the PUC denied the alliance's request 2-1.
Alliance members said they had hoped to obtain intervenor status so they could request an environmental study be conducted, assessing the wind farms' possible impact on migrating birds and habitat. The alliance earlier this week announced the preliminary results of an assessment it commissioned, which suggested the wind farms could prove harmful to migrating birds.
Representatives from PPM Energy and Babcock & Brown said this week that the companies have conducted bird-migration studies at the proposed wind-farm sites and have concluded that few birds would be in danger from wind turbines placed there.
In a statement, the alliance expressed "extreme disappointment" in the commission's decision to deny intervenor status.
"By refusing the participation of experts who have come to the table to offer their experience and assistance, the PUC is denying itself and our state the benefit of their knowledge and insight," said Jim Blackburn, an Austin attorney and the alliance's founder, in a statement.
The alliance might pursue legal action next, alliance spokeswoman Elyse Yates said Wednesday.
Twenty years ago, a little girl from Midland named Jessica McClure was rescued from a well as the whole world watched.
There was no fanfare here Tuesday to mark the day in 1987 when 18-month-old Jessica McClure was lifted to safety after falling into the open backyard well.The young wife and mother is living quietly in this West Texas oil patch city.
"Jessica's just been a wonderful, wonderful mother," said her father, Chip McClure. "That's always been Jessica's dream, to be a stay-at-home mom."
In 3½ years, however, her quiet existence might change when all the tributes that were sent to her while the nation waited anxiously for her safe rescue matures into a payment of $1 million or more.
Many of the sympathetic strangers worldwide who remained glued to television coverage until Jessica was freed from 22 feet below the ground showered the family with teddy bears, homemade gifts, cards and cash.
The cash sits in a trust fund waiting for the 21-year-old to turn 25. Her father says Jessica is a happy and active woman, and doing "all the normal stuff" with her year-old son, Simon.
[...]
In 1987, Chip and Cissy McClure were poor teenagers struggling to make ends meet during the depths of the oil bust.
Cissy McClure left Jessica in her sister's yard while she went to answer the phone.
Moments later, Jessica happened upon an 8-inch hole and innocently touched off a global event.
When rescuers brought her to the surface 2½ days later, her head was bandaged, she was covered with dirt and bruises, and her right palm was immobilized to her face, an image ingrained in millions of people's memories and one that won a Pulitzer Prize for Odessa American photographer Scott Shaw.
Chip McClure remembers being "absolutely floored" by the media coverage once the family got to the hospital with Jessica.
Vice President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, former Midland residents, visited. President Ronald Reagan called.
"It's a little surreal," Chip McClure said about the passage of so many years.
"It's difficult to comprehend."
About three years after the TV cameras left Midland, Chip and Cissy divorced. Each has remarried.
But throughout Jessica's childhood, both worked to give her a normal life.
"At the end of the day, she went through a lot and was loved by millions and millions," said Chip McClure, 38, who sells real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In 1995, paramedic and rescuer Robert O'Donnell, who wriggled into the passageway and slathered a frightened Jessica in petroleum jelly before sliding her out into the bright television lights, shot and killed himself at his parents' ranch outside Midland.His brother, Rick, has said O'Donnell's life "fell apart" because of the stress of the rescue, the attention it created and the anticlimactic return to everyday life.
In 2004, William Andrew Glasscock Jr., a former Midland police officer who helped in the rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and improper storage of explosives. A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years on two state charges of sexual assault.
Add Irving, TX to the cities that are hellbent on following the Farmers Branch path to obsolescence.
The bottom dropped out of Mike Granger's snack business almost immediately after the Mexican consul general in Dallas warned people to avoid this sprawling suburb."I'm picking up stales," Granger said last week as he plucked Bimbo snack cakes aimed at Hispanic customers from the shelves of a convenience store in the less affluent southern part of town. "My customers have disappeared."
Since late last month, illegal immigrants have retreated into the shadows and Hispanic activists have organized protests over an Irving program that checks the immigration status of everyone arrested by city police.
From September 2006 through last week, 1,638 people have been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation, city officials said.
Complaints about the initiative began building over the summer, when arrests picked up to about 300 a month.
Opposition boiled over last month after police arrested more than a dozen men who were barbecuing outside their apartment. They were jailed on misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and turned over to federal custody when it was shown they were in the country illegally.
Latino leaders say they initially supported the city's 24/7 Criminal Alien Program as an alternative to more drastic approaches being advocated by anti-illegal immigration activists in the city.
"When they talked about deporting criminals, we didn't think they meant mothers taking their children to school," said the Rev. Ismael Castro, pastor of the House of God Church. "Nobody realized it was going to hurt a lot of innocent people."
Castro, an El Salvador native who sneaked into the U.S. with his family at age 12 and received amnesty in 1986, said fear that they are being targeted by city police for arrest and deportation has spread among Latinos in Irving.
Eduardo Rea, spokesman for the Mexican consul general in Dallas, said Mexicans arrested in Irving and their families have complained that police have stopped people on the street and in vehicles to ask them about their immigration status.
"We think that is racial profiling," Rea said. "If you're Anglo, you are not going to be asked for your immigration status."
Rea said Mexican Consul Enrique Hubbard Urrea met with Irving officials in late July.
"We had a meeting in which we told them about the complaints we were getting," he said. "In two months, nothing has happened so we have issued a recommendation that people don't go to Irving."
By [20]23 or [20]24, we're talking about three out of every four Texas workers being non-Anglo. I like to say, well, if I, as an aging Anglo, forget that the quality of services I'm going to have--fire, police, and other services--depend on how well primarily the working-age population is doing, I really do so to my own detriment. Our fates are intertwined and related. How well our non-Anglo citizens do in Texas is how well Texas will do.
Don't they have anything better to do in Farmers Branch than this?
Some residents of this Dallas suburb that tried to ban apartment rentals to illegal immigrants now want the city to regulate which colorful hues people can paint their homes.Although the City Council hasn't decided whether to consider any house paint restrictions, Hispanic leaders say it's yet another effort to target Latinos in the city.
"I believe controlling the color you paint your house is basically profiling the Hispanic community," said Elizabeth Villafranca, whose family owns a Mexican restaurant in Farmers Branch. "We all know who paints their homes tropical colors."
[...]
Victorian homes are often painted bright blue or peacock green, buildings in South Beach typically have outside lights in electric purples and yellow and structures in Santa Fe blend into the desert landscape with earthen reds or dark tans.
But most homes in Farmers Branch are brick, with trim or shutters painted in neutral colors. A handful are more brightly colored, such as one wooden home with Kelly green trim or an upscale two-story house with one burnt orange side.
Residents Matt Burton and Robin Bernier proposed the color standards at a city council meeting earlier this month, presenting photos showing homes with shades they found unsightly.
Burton didn't immediately return a message for comment, and a telephone number for Bernier was not available.
But Bernier, who also supported the city's apartment ban, told The Dallas Morning News: "When you paint your house some fluorescent or garish color scheme, you negatively affect my (home) value."
For now, city officials plan no action.
"We're going to look into it and see what the legal ramifications are," said city spokeswoman Nicole Recker.
As you know, the impact that wind turbines may have on migratory birds has dominated the conversation about the proposed wind farm on the Kenedy Ranch, which is currently being challenged by a coalition of environmental groups plus the neighboring King Ranch. As much as the issue has been in the news, I can't recall seeing any actual numbers being mentioned in them. Are we talking hundreds, thousands, what? This Brownsville Herald story is the first article I've seen to include such data.
Despite the companies' reassurances, alliance members say they are concerned about the wind projects' impact on endangered and threatened bird species in the region, as well as on the coastal habitat. The tall turbines and their fast-spinning blades could lead to substantial bird kills, the groups say. The needed infrastructure -- including concrete bases for the towers and roads running throughout the site -- will deplete natural habitat, they said.Wind turbines made today typically have towers from 200 to 260 feet tall, with rotors from 150 to 260 feet in diameter, according to the National Wind Coordinating Committee. At their tips, the blades can turn as fast as 138 to 182 miles per hour.
Bird fatality rates at other wind-turbine sites have varied widely, from less than one bird per turbine at a site in Oregon to 10 per turbine at a site in Tennessee. The average, according to the National Wind Coordinating Committee, is two per turbine per year.
The companies counter that they've conducted assessments of the bird populations in the area, and concluded the turbines would cause minimal bird fatalities.
"Since 2004, we've been doing migrating bird studies, breeding bird studies," said Jan Johnson, spokeswoman for PPM Energy.
According to PPM, these studies have shown, for example, that raptors like the aplomado falcon -- one of the species of concern to the alliance -- fly west of the site and wouldn't be affected.
Babcock & Brown has come to similar conclusions, Shugart said. Also, the company is planning to construct turbines and the connecting roads so as to minimally disturb wetlands, he said.
"We've worked with local environmental agencies and the Army Corps of Engineers on the project, on avoiding the wetlands," Shugart said.
Most of the land will remain undisturbed, he said.
"It's not like a sprawling Wal-Mart parking lot," Shugart said.
However, because the companies have generally funded their own studies, and in some cases haven't made the results public, alliance members are unconvinced.
"It's not the same as having people from environmental agencies, qualified biologists, discuss the studies that need to be done," said David Newstead, president of the Coastal Bend Audubon Society. "It needs to be legitimate, peer-reviewed research. ... In Texas there are essentially no studies like that."
Interestingly, this story does not mention the one place that's been held up as the worst case scenario for migratory birds, the Altamont Pass wind farm. How does it compare? I did some Googling, and found the following:
From the Heartland Institute:
Giant wind turbines at Altamont Pass, California, are illegally killing more than 1,000 birds of prey each year, according to a lawsuit filed January 12 by the Center for Biological Diversity. The suit demands an injunction halting operation of the turbines until and unless protective measures are taken and highlights increasing concerns regarding a power source long hailed as environmentally friendly by environmental activist groups.Thousands of wind turbines were built in Northern California's Altamont Pass region during the 1980s in response to activist groups' call for greater reliance on renewable energy sources. Construction of the wind turbines, however, has made the region one of the most deadly places in the world for a large variety of birds. Literally thousands of birds are killed by the turbines each year, including roughly 1,000 annual kills of such valued birds of prey as golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and burrowing owls.
Contra Costa Times.com reports that an Alameda County (CA) Superior Court Judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed against wind-power companies that operate the Altamont Pass Wind Farm may proceed (registration required).The lawsuit, which was filed last November by a number of environmental organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity, claims that wind turbines at Altamont have killed 880 to 1,330 golden eagles, hawks, owls and other protected raptors each year for the past 20 years, in violation of California Fish and Game Code provisions as well as the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act. The plaintiffs assert that violations of these regulations and statutes amount to unfair business practices and seek damages in order to purchase and preserve bird habitats.
In 1994, shortly after raptor deaths in the Altamont Pass became a general concern, the wind energy industry joined with other stakeholders (government officials, environmental groups, utilities) to form the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC), a multi-stakeholder collaborative aimed at addressing the wind/avian issue and other issues affecting the industry's future. NWCC has sponsored numerous meetings and academic papers to better understand wind energy's wildlife impacts, including updates to the environmental community about the latest wind-related research; events related to the biological significance of wind's impacts; and a wind project permitting handbook.The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) produced a report in 2003 that estimated that somewhat more than 1,000 birds were being killed annually by the wind turbines in the pass. One-half of the birds killed are raptors. This is significantly more than that estimated by studies in the 1990s. However, the study also estimated that only 24 golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) are killed annually, about one-half of that estimated earlier. The golden eagle is a protected species. Most of the raptors killed are red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis).
The study also concluded that the mortality rate per turbine is nearly ten times that of the previous estimates. Earlier studies suggested the mortality rate ranged from 0.02 to 0.05 birds killed per turbine per year. The NREL study puts the death rate at 0.19 birds/turbine/year.
A Goverment Accounting Office (GAO) report identified several unique features of the wind resource area at Altamont Pass that contribute to the high number of raptor deaths. First, California was the first area to develop wind power in significant numbers and thus has some of the oldest turbines still in operation in the United States. Older turbines produce less power per turbine, so it took many turbines to produce a certain level of energy; today, newer facilities producing the same amount of energy would have much fewer turbines. For example, Altamont Pass has thousands of wind turbines--many of which are older models--whereas, newer facilities generally have significantly fewer turbines. The sheer number of turbines in Altamont Pass is a major reason for the high number of fatalities in the area.
Secondly, the design of older generation turbines, like those found in Altamont Pass, are more fatal to raptors. Specifically, early turbines were mounted on towers 60 feet to 80 feet in height, while today's turbines are mounted on towers 200 feet to 260 feet in height. The older turbines at Altamont Pass have blades that reach lower to the ground, and thus can be more hazardous to raptors as they swoop down to catch prey. The relative absence of raptor kills at newer facilities with generally taller turbines supports the notion that these turbines are less lethal to raptors. Third, the location of the wind turbine facilities at Altamont Pass may have contributed to the high number of raptor deaths. Studies show that there are a high number of raptors that pass through the area, as well as an abundance of raptor prey at the base of the turbines. In addition, the location of wind turbines on ridge tops and canyons may increase the likelihood that raptors will collide with turbines. One reason why other parts of the country may not be experiencing high levels of raptor mortality is partly because wind developers have used information from Altamont Pass to site new turbines in hopes of avoiding similar situations.
Of course, you can't consider this in a vacuum, either. The choice isn't just about dead birds versus not-dead birds, it's about wind energy versus another coal plant as well. Just keep the bigger picture in mind, that's all I'm asking. Link via South Texas Chisme.
So what do we know about utilities deregulation in Texas? Well, first and foremost, it hasn't delivered on its biggest promise:
"Competition in the electric industry will benefit Texans by reducing monthly rates and offering consumers more choices about the power they use," then-Gov.
George W. Bush said at the time.Then-state Sen. David Sibley, who was a key author of the bill, put the promise more bluntly:
''If all consumers don't benefit from this, we will have wasted our time and failed our constituency," he said.
Eight years later, many consumers are calling deregulation just that -- a failed waste of time.
From 2000 to June of this year, the average electric rate in Texas rose 56 percent, more than in all but three states, according to the most recent nationwide federal government figures.
"It's like there's a penalty for being a Texan when it comes to your light bill," said Mike Coleman, a Cypress homeowner who also is responsible for the electric bills at an industrial equipment supplier with offices in four states.
[...]
[T]he very structure of Texas' deregulated market exposes customers to the full impact of rising natural gas prices more than in other states, or even in parts of Texas still served by regulated electric companies, municipally owned utilities or electric cooperatives.
The 25 percent of Texans living in those regulated markets generally pay less than rates available in markets that have been opened to competition.
Houston residential consumers use an average of 1,130 kilowatt hours a month. Bills for that much power would range from $125.43 to $163.85 based on rates available in Houston at the end of September for a one-year, fixed-rate plan. The average rate available in Houston would produce a monthly bill of $142.95.
The same amount of electricity would cost $97.41 in San Antonio and $105.32 in Austin, both served by municipally owned utilities.
Deregulation supporters say its success should not be judged just on price, and point to the variety of electricity service options available to customers. But they have been slow to take advantage of the choices.
What we do have is some darned fine rationalizations:
Regardless of the wholesale market structure, however, it's unlikely electric prices would have climbed as they have under deregulation had gas prices remained stable.If gas stayed below $4 per million BTUs, as it had for most of the 1990s when deregulation was being planned, state politicians' projections of lower electric bills might have been met.
"If we still had $3 gas, they'd be building a statue of me somewhere down there in Houston," says Sibley.
But gas prices climbed into the $6 and $8 range beginning in 2003, and spiked to $15.37 in late 2005 when hurricanes Katrina and Rita cut off much of the production in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mark Jacobs, CEO of Reliant Energy, predicts that rates in other states will catch up with Texas."Those other markets are still on an uphill climb and haven't passed on all the increases in gas prices we saw from Katrina and Rita," Jacobs said.
Apparently, our official state dinosaur is an impostor.
Bones discovered in the 1990s that spurred the Legislature to declare the pleurocoelus the state's official dinosaur were misidentified and actually came from a different species, according to a student's research.The findings of Peter Rose, a former graduate student at Southern Methodist University, were published recently in "Palaeontologia Electronica," an online journal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Mainstream scientists have been quick to accept Rose's findings, said Louis Jacobs, a professor of geological science at SMU.
"I'm one of those ones who presumed the bones were pleurocoelus, and now I'm convinced he is right," said Jacobs, adding that the new species should be promoted to Official Dinosaur of Texas.
Rose studied the bones for three years as part of his master's thesis. His comparison of the bones with a pleurocoelus (pronounced pluro-SEE-lus) specimen at the Smithsonian Institution revealed that the leg and shoulder bones were significantly different.
He named the previously unknown species the paluxysaurus (pronounced pah-luxy-sah-rus), because the bones were found near the Paluxy River.
"I wasn't going in with any assumptions. I thought that what I was looking at was the pleurocoelus," said Rose, 28, who is now a graduate geology student at the University of Minnesota.
"But in the process of describing the bones, I came to the conclusion that it had to be something really different."
Scientists believe the pleurocoelus was a plant-eater that lived in what is now Central Texas 110 million years ago. They thought the giant creature, which was up to 60 feet long and weighed up to 45 tons, was the only dinosaur of it size in North America during that period.
Rose said the discovery of a new species means there was more diversity among dinosaurs of that period than was previously thought.
Jacobs said the original identification of the bones was based more on assumption than systematic study. The bones were covered in limestone, making them difficult to identify.
"They couldn't see the bones very well, and they assumed that anything of that size and age had to be pleurocoelus," Jacobs said.
The bones are now in the possession of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, where they were on display as the remains of a pleurocoelus. The museum is currently renovating the display, and the bones will be identified as paluxysaurus when it's reopened in 2009, said Charlie Walter, the museum's chief operating officer.
Walter said the museum will petition the Legislature to designate the paluxysaurus as the state's rightful official dinosaur.
Whatever may happen with the King-Kenedy Ranch kerfuffle, wind energy in Texas will still move forward.
A Louisiana company was awarded leases to four tracts Tuesday in the state's first open bidding for offshore wind power in the Gulf of Mexico.Wind Energy Systems Technology, already developing a wind farm eight miles off of Galveston, was nominated by the state and was the only bidder for the tracts. A British company had expressed interest but later indicated it wasn't prepared to make an offer, said Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.
Patterson said he expects to hold bidding for more offshore wind power leases in about a year. The Texas General Land Office oversees development of territory up to 10 miles from the state's coastline.
"If you're in the wind business, whether it's onshore or offshore, Texas is the place to be," Patterson said.
Though it's not clear why more companies didn't bid on the offshore tracts Tuesday, it may be that many are busy with wind power projects on land in Texas, said Christine Real de Azua, spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association.
Texas is now the nation's top producer of wind power, according to the association. The state had 3,352 megawatts of wind-generating capacity installed by the end of the second quarter this year, ahead of California's 2,376 megawatts.
Patterson dismissed the idea that offshore wind turbines will hurt flocks of migrating birds or be an eyesore for coastal visitors. Birds tend to fly higher than the wind equipment and, at eight miles offshore, the giant turbines can't be seen by tourists on land, he said.And if they are in view, he said, "I don't think it looks all that bad."
A press release from the Land Office regarding these leases is beneath the fold.
Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, today awarded the first four competitively bid leases for offshore wind power in the nation's history."The Texas Wind Rush is on, and the pioneers are staking their claims," Patterson said. "And wherever there are pioneers, the settlers soon follow."
The leases, awarded to Wind Energy Systems Technology (W.E.S.T., LLC), allow work to begin immediately on the construction of meteorological testing towers on each of the four tracts. Wind Energy Systems Technology is based in Louisiana. The company already holds the nation's only offshore lease for wind power, and is collecting data for a wind farm off the coast of Galveston.
Once the wind farms are operational, W.E.S.T. will pay the state's Permanent School Fund a minimum of $132 million over the 30-year life of the leases, discounted for the present value of the leases. The company's actual dollar commitment to the PSF, in today's dollars, is $258 million.
Factor in the Permanent School Fund's minimum gross revenue from the wind farms producing at 250MW to 300MW, and that total rises to more than $231 million, discounted for present value, or $433 million over the 30-years the leases cover.
"Wind energy is not a feel-good fad," Patterson said. "This is real technology, real business, real energy and it's happening right here in Texas."
Four offshore tracts were offered for wind development as part of the regular oil and gas lease sale held today. The offshore wind energy tracts are near Jefferson, Calhoun, Brazoria and Cameron counties. The four tracts total 73,098 acres in size. The tracts range in size from 12,240.02 to 23,040 acres.
The research and development stage will last approximately four years and the production term will be 30 years for each lease.
W.E.S.T. will now begin to pay the state's Permanent School Fund $91,000 a year for the right to develop wind farms on the four tracts of land. Following the research phase of the leases, W.E.S.T. will begin to develop wind farms on each of the four tracts. If winds are favorable, W.E.S.T. plans to build wind farms that will produce a minimum of 250 MW to 300 MW per lease.
W.E.S.T. will then begin paying the state's Permanent School Fund a percentage of the electricity produced on the leases. For the first eight years of each lease, W.E.S.T. will pay the Permanent School Fund from 3.5 to 6.5 percent of all electricity produced from the four tracts of land.
Generally, that royalty will start at 3.5 percent of all electricity produced for the first eight years of the lease. That percentage will grow to 4.5 to 4.75 percent of total production for years nine through 16, and 5.5 to 6.5 percent of total production for years 17 through 30 of the 30-year lease.
"This was the first, but won't be the last," Patterson said. "The future of offshore wind power in the U.S. is right here in Texas, and the Land Office is open for business."
From the weekend, an update on the Kenedy wind farm saga.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has agreed to consider at its Oct. 17 meeting whether a coalition of conservation organizations can fight two wind farms proposed for the Texas Coast."We're very pleased that they will listen to our point of view," said Winnie Burkett of the Houston Audubon Society. "We think there should be public input to this kind of decision. We're worried because these wind farms and this transmission line are in the middle of a major migratory corridor."
[...]
The Coastal Habitat Alliance, a combination of the King Ranch and local and national environmental organizations, is fighting the plans. Because permits are not needed to site power generation facilities in Texas, the group is fighting the transmission line that would serve the farms' 241 turbines.
An administrative law judge has already denied the alliance status to protest the project. The alliance asked the PUC to overturn that ruling, which the PUC has now agreed to consider.
"If this hadn't happened, we would be out of luck," said alliance attorney James Blackburn.
State Rep. Kirk England, the Lege's newest Democrat, discusses the reasons why he switched.
"My community's agenda and the Republican leadership's agenda are absolutely not the same," said the Grand Prairie lawmaker. "Certainly the speaker is included in that, but it's the Republican leadership in general. I'm going to throw the governor in there."Mr. England said he and Republican leaders were not on the same page on issues related to public education, access to health care and other pocketbook matters. And he criticized Gov. Rick Perry for vetoing a bill that would have increased the state's contribution to community colleges.
"Shame on the leadership for that," he said, blaming House Speaker Tom Craddick and his lieutenants.
[...]
Mr. England said Republicans were not interested in pocketbook issues and even tried to get him to change votes in ways that his constituents would oppose.
The self-described moderate, first elected last year in a special vote to replace a lawmaker who resigned, opposed Mr. Craddick's bid to be re-elected speaker and often voted with Democrats.
"The leadership didn't like it," he said. "They made it loud and clear and worked to get me to change those votes."
The district, which also includes southern Irving, has long been a swing district between the two parties but appears to be leaning more Democratic, as Mr. England won his two elections by small margins. But he said his change had nothing to do with demographic shifts or political opportunism.
"Switching parties is not going to change the way I vote," he said. "I saw the Democratic Party understands the diverse state we live in."
To me, the intriguing thing about this is the possibility that England is at the leading edge of a trend. That same story above also notes the switch back of Dallas County Judge John Creuzot. As Creuzot was a Democrat before he was a Republican, and given the Democratic sweep in Dallas County last year, one can easily see that as more opportunism than anything. But from a more crassly pragmatic perspective, it all looks the same in the box score. I've heard rumors already of a couple of Harris County judges, who would be up for re-election in 2010, that will run as Democrats. One presumes this is contingent on the Dems doing as well here next year as many people think they will, but you never know. A trickle can become a flood in a hurry. Professors R-Squared expand on that:
Party switching, much like the the fight over Craddick's Speakership and the reduction in the GOP's majority in the Texas House after 2006, should be of serious concern to our fellow Republicans regarding the long-term health and future of the Republican Party in Texas.To underscore just how much of a concern that this should be to our Republican readers, we're going to go scholarly here:
1.) Significant party switching tends to be concentrated in periods of high ideological polarization (Nokken, 2005).
2.) The varying fortunes of the parties among voters can potentially induce individuals to switch parties (Aldrich and Bianco, 1992).
3.) Party switches tend to coincide with changes in important macro-political conditions such as times of military conflict, changing economic conditions, and changes in partisan control of key political institutions (King and Benjamin, 1986).
4.) A member's ideological position relative to the two parties also appears to influence the decision to switch parties. Ideologically cross-pressured members - those who lie to the moderate-to-liberal end of the distribution of Republicans may find that their preferences are incongruent with the members of their current party and actually lie closer to members of the other party and switch parties to take advantage of a better ideological fit (Castle and Fett, 1996).
5.) A party that attracts switchers without losing members to rival parties, obviously, increases its seat share, which in turn might make it more attractive to other potential switchers (Laver and Benoit, 2003).
The scholarly research in Political Science would strongly suggest that party switching (which have seen in Harris County and nationally) potentially signifies a serious downturn in the fortunes for the GOP in 2008 and beyond.
The trend of Democrats switching to the GOP got under way amid Ronald Reagan's success in the 1980s and continued in the 1990s with the growth of the Republican Party in Texas in the 1990s. After former House member Anita Hill of Dallas abandoned the Democrats in favor of the GOP in 1981, Ray Keller of Duncanville and George Pierce of San Antonio followed suit when they spurned the Democratic Party and became Republicans in 1983. The next House member to make the switch to the GOP was Charlie Evans, who became a Republican in 1987.Perry had been elected to the House three times as a Democrat before jumping to the GOP in 1989 and winning the agricultural commissioner's race as a Republican the following year. A Democratic House colleague, Ric Williamson of Weatherford, joined the Republican Party in 1995 several years before Perry tapped him to be a transportation commissioner. State Rep. Delwin Jones served in the House for nine years as a Democrat before returning 16 years later as a Republican. Chisum was the last House member to jump ship to the GOP when he bid farewell to the Democrats ten years ago.
Bad preservation news, I'm sad to say, is everywhere:
The town of Denison is about to raze one of the grandest old buildings in North Texas reportedly to clear the way for a Walgreens. It doesn't take a history geek or an architecture expert to appreciate the old Denison High School building, which dates to 1913.You can read a history of the building and see pictures of it here.
Denison-population 22,000-sits north of the Metroplex and neighbors Sherman, near the Oklahoma border. The old high school building on main street is a beautiful relic, replete with a white clock tower, towering chimneys, rounded archways, and a detailed amphitheater. Though abandoned for more than 15 years, the building remains structurally sound and easily could be refurbished.
And in fact, preservationists raised roughly $2.2 million in donations to fix up the place. The Texas Historical Commission spent the past year meeting with and writing letters to urge Denison officials to save the unique structure, says Brad Patterson in the Historical Commission's architecture division.
None of it dissuaded city leaders, even though the building is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Despite their dogged fight, local residents and historical preservationists from around the state and country appear to have lost their battle.
Last Wednesday, a district judge denied the preservationists a temporary restraining order, and demolition began on the high school that afternoon. As of [Monday] morning, roughly 60 percent of the structure had been destroyed.
Nothing you can do about this but work harder to save the next building that needs it. And keep the faith that it really does matter. You hope more people will come to realize that while there still are buildings worth saving.
UPDATE: It won't be a Walgreen's. For what it's worth.
The Express News has a followup to the earlier story about the Coastal Habitat Alliance's efforts to halt the construction of power transmission lines that will be used for wind turbines at the Kenedy Ranch.
The Coastal Habitat Alliance, a combination of the King Ranch and local and national environmental organizations, will ask the Public Utility Commission of Texas to step into the situation Monday. The group wants the PUC to overturn an administrative law judge's ruling and allow a hearing over a transmission line that would serve the two farms.Because state regulations don't require site permits for power plants, there will be no hearing on the wind farms themselves. That could change if the development impacts nearby wetlands under the jurisdiction of the federal government, but both developers are seeking to avoid the wetlands.
The developers of one of the farms, the Australian-based Babcock & Brown Ltd., claims it has conducted more environmental study on this site than almost any other in the world.The company's chief development officer, John Calaway, said those studies show the wind farm has little potential to harm birds. Calaway said the company is even pioneering a radar-based system for the project that can shut down the turbines within a minute in the event of a massive bird run-in.
But Calaway said it's unlikely at this point that he would share the studies with any of the groups in opposition.
"I don't think that, because of the way they've been referring to us, that we will be jumping up and down to accommodate then," he said. "And quite frankly we don't have to."
Calaway's company wants to build 157 turbines. The other company, PPM Energy, which is owned by the Spanish company Iberdrola, has proposed 84 turbines. The two wind farms combined would produce about enough energy to power the city of Corpus Christi, Calaway said.
"And that's with zero emissions and using zero water," he said.
Problems with birds and wind turbines have a history that goes far beyond Texas. Generally, most agree, the harm caused by such operations is minimal. But a few horrendous examples worldwide have caused concern.Closest to home, a massive conglomeration of wind farms in California's Altamont Pass kills more than 1,000 raptors a year. These include many iconic species such as golden eagles and red-tailed hawks.
I figure the PUC will side with the Kenedy folks. That strikes me as the right result, but one that will be more about a weak process of oversight than anything else. I'd feel more comfortable in this if I had more faith in the PUC. But I suppose when the stopped clock is right in my favor, I shouldn't complain too much.
From the office of the Land Commissioner:
The 21st Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Fall Cleanup will take place Saturday, September 22nd at 26 sites along the Texas coast announced Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. The all-volunteer event is coordinated through the Adopt-A-Beach Program of the Texas General Land Office. Additional cleanups are scheduled for the winter and spring.Volunteers can register at any of the check-in sites from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. on September 22nd, and will be given data cards, gloves, pencils and trash bags. Volunteers are advised to wear closed-toe shoes, bring sunscreen and plenty of drinking water.
"Seventy percent of trash found on Texas beaches is left behind by average beachgoers," Patterson said. "Humans created this problem, and humans have a responsibility to fix it. I urge all my fellow Texans to join me at the beach and help turn the tide against trash."
This year, Texans who are not able to attend the cleanup can help keep Texas beaches clean by making a tax-deductible donation online. There are several different Adopt-A-Beach sponsorship levels ranging from $25 to $25,000, allowing both individuals and corporations to contribute to this major cleanup effort.
Texas beaches receive large amounts of marine debris due to a convergence of currents in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1986, more than 355,000 Adopt-A-Beach volunteers have picked up more than 6,700 tons of this debris, some of it originating from as far away as Greece. Volunteers record data on the trash to learn more about the causes of marine debris and to help mitigate pollution along Texas' 367 miles of coastline.
For a complete listing of cleanup sites for the upcoming Fall Cleanup, to learn how you can participate, or for additional information on the Adopt-A-Beach Program, please visit www.texasadoptabeach.org, or contact the GLO at 1-877-TX COAST.
Senator Mario Gallegos has a great idea to require all new schools built in Texas to meet strict building codes that would allow them to serve as temporary shelters during a hurricane. Florida has laws in place for this. He intends to introduce legislation to this effect in the 2008 session.
Is this idea too late for the HISD bond package?
After the Humberto "clusterstorm" - with a tropical depression turning into a Category 1 hurricane overnight - there sure seems to be a need for nearby local shelters that everyone can get to quickly.
The Houston Chronicle has more.
Ever wonder what might happen if the spiders got organized? Well, now you know.
A variety of spider species built on one another's work to create a sprawling web that blanketed hundreds of yards of trees and shrubs at a North Texas park, according to entomologists who studied the unusual formation.Heavy rains early this summer created prime feeding conditions for the spiders, which worked collectively to spin a web that nearly covered a pond ripe with mosquitoes and other insects.
"Normally they are cannibalistic and their webs are separated," said Allen Dean, a Texas A&M University entomologist. "They live in harmony because there's so much food available."
The web covered 200 yards along a trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, about 45 miles east of Dallas. The August discovery of the massive web spurred debate among entomologists about its origin and rarity.
[...]
Arachnid expert Hank Guarisco, of Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan., traveled to Texas to take a look for himself. He camped at the park, observing the spiders at night because some of them are nocturnal.
He said he was impressed with the variety of