Texas Environmental News 2020 - Jan 13 (4 minute read)

Dow Chemical, the country’s largest producer of the carcinogen ethylene oxide, has been given the green light in Texas to continue standard manufacturing practices of the product. The odorless chemical used as a feed stock and to sterilize medical equipment is made at Dow’s chemical plant in Freeport. Prior to President Donald Trump’s presidency, the EPA found the chemical to be a carcinogen. According to the The Intercept, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality instated regulations in 2019 allowing exposure to the carcinogen to be 3500 times weaker than the EPA threshold. Leaks at the plant have been blamed for an extraordinary high rate of cancer in the area. In 2019 over 86 million dollars was donated by the chemical industry to political organizations, 1.4 billion in the past 12 years.

As waste water injection wells become harder to come by especially in the world’s biggest oil field – the Permian Basin, pro oil and gas legislators passed HB 2771 in the Texas legislature last May, essentially allowing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be a one-stop shop for oil&gas permitting. Surface discharge of oily slops including frack water that has been treated with pesticides, diesel, acids, detergents, lubricants, solvents, and anti-corrosives are on the table. The new permitting process likely will come into effect in 2021. Thirty-three state Democrats voted against the bill enabling oil&gas to pump this type of waste water into Texas rivers, lakes, creeks and arroyos, while no Republicans dissented.

Texas Environmental News - 2018 recap

March

West Texas is Sinking – that’s according to research by geophysicists at SMU. In fact up to  forty inches of sink in Wink in just 2 and a half years. Co-author of the report Zhong Lu said in a press release, “The ground movement we're seeing is not normal. The ground doesn't typically do this without some cause, "The report concluded that the sink is a result of decades of oil field activity in the Permian Basin. “This region of Texas has been punctured like a pincushion with oil wells and injection wells since the1940s, and our findings associate that activity with ground movement,” study co-author Jin-Woo Kimsaid.

Christi Craddick, chief regulator of the TX Railroad Commission, which permits deep injection disposal wells, oil&gas extraction, pipelines and oversees the safety of abandoned wells, was given the 2018 Hats Off Award by the Texas Independent Oil Producers in Houston this week. According to the Austin Chronicle, Craddick has financial investments in 176 Texas oil&gas wells.

Texas ranks first in water violations according to a new study by Environment Texas. During a 21-month period in 2016 and 2017, Texas industries and municipalities violated the Clean Water Act 938 times. Placing second was Pennsylvania with 633 violations. Violations included oil and chemical spills and e. coli contaminated water discharges. While many violations go unreported many of those that are reported carry no fine. The study concluded that state agencies were too lax and that the Trump Administration's reduced emphasis on enforcement gave industry no incentive to stop polluting.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian uploaded his op-ed titled “A Hypocritical Hero” on the TRC website this week. Mr. Christian is taking aim at Arnold Schwartzeneggar. Schwartzenneggar is suing oil&gas companies for mass murder suggesting fossil fuels are just like the tobacco issue. He stated, “The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global-warming happening because of fossil fuels.” Christian in turn writes, “Instead of acting like a Republican, Mr. Schwarzenegger must be trying to play the hero again.” Christian points out the actor's predilection to travel by gas-guzzling cars or jets, sighting the double standard as hypocrisy.

The Tx RR Comm issued 1097 new oil&gas drilling permits for the month of February. Nearly half of these were for Permian Basin operators. Statewide drilling activity is up by over 10% from February last year. State law allows each well to release up to 25 tons annually of VOC gasses including the carcinogen Benzene. There are over 170,000 oil and gas wells operating in Texas.

The Texas Horn Shell Mussel is the first endangered species to be listed under the Trump administration. The mussel allegedly can still be found in Brewster County along the lower canyon stretch of the Rio Grande and four other places including the mouths of the Pecos and Devil's River. Often an indicator of worsening environmental quality, over thirty species of fresh water mussels in the United States are now endangered, threatened, proposed or nominees for listing. The final US Fish and Wildlife assessment on the Texas Horn Shell was not hopeful, stating that Climate Change forecasted for future conditions will lead to increased water temperatures, decreased dissolved oxygen, and increased toxicity of contaminants and ammonia. They also stated that Texas is projected to be one of the areas most affected by climate change in North America.

Governor Abbott has selected the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to determine how the 209 million-dollar Texas settlement from the Volkswagen emission scandal will be distributed. The money according to the settlement must be used for cleaner burning vehicles including mass transit. Fossil Fuel interests are pushing for natural gas while Environmentalists are supporting electric vehicles including a quadrupling of recharge stations. The Sierra Club's position stated, “not only do they have zero emissions at the tailpipe, they are more efficient, cost less to operate and have other benefits including job creation.” Lori Glover, chair of the Big Bend Regional Sierra Club stated, “Continuance of fossil fuels just pollutes the air and water and brings us closer to the brink. A true bridge is investing in renewable energy infrastructure.”

Exxon-Mobil announced they expect their fossil fuel production in the Permian Basin to be 600,000barrels daily of oil equivalent in seven years. “We are so confident (in the Permian), said Sara Ortwein, President of ExxonMobil’s XTO Energy subsidiary, “that we plan to triple our production per day by 2025.” Ortwein went on to say at the IHS Markit conference in Houston earlier this month, “In our quest to become more efficient, we can’t take shortcuts when it comes to safety or the environment. As we expand in the Permian, we must manage our environmental footprint responsibly.” But Sharon Wilson, senior organizer for Earthworks said, “The oil and gas industry has been promising to contain their air pollution for over a decade and they have repeatedly broken that promise. They are not containing their emissions anywhere and especially not in the Permian where expansion is out of control and regulators are AWOL. Instead of expanding fossil fuel use we need a rapidly managed decline.”

Half of the country’s oil rigs are drilling in the Permian Basin and one out of every 6 barrels of oil equivalent produced in the US originates there. The fracking boom activity is at its highest level ever. Exxon announced it would triple its production in the Permian by 2025 while Apache Corp plans to drill 6000 wells on its leased land near Balmorhea State Park over the next 10 years. Meantime the demand for fracking water has doubled since last year according to IHS Markit Ltd. The consulting firm predicted Permian oil&gas extraction will require 97 billion barrels of water annually by 2020. That’s equivalent to 82 years of water supply for the city of El Paso.

TCEQ chairman Bryan Shaw told US legislators last week in Washington that reducing ozone in the air would not be a health benefit. “We’ve lowered the ozone standard close to the point that I’m convinced we’re not getting much, if any benefits health wise from lowering the ozone standard, said Shaw. The federal government is considering lowering ozone particulate from 75ppb to 70 ppb. Ozone is the substance of smog. Smog according to the EPA is an important health problem and has many negative effects including premature death. Texas, according to the EPA, is the biggest smog producer in the country.

Kelsy Warren’s Dallas-based Sunoco Corporation has been put on notice by the Public Utilities Commission in Pennsylvania. The billionaire’s Mariner 2 gas pipeline under construction there is causing sink holes in a residential area of Chester County. Many residents have been forced to relocate or stay in their houses surrounded by 15-foot sinkholes. Residents Russel and Mary March issued this statement: “Sunoco still does not seem to know the extent of the destruction it caused five months after the sinkholes first appeared. This new ‘investigation’ is long overdue. But to add insult to injury, the ‘investigation’ may force the residents of Lisa Drive to have to relocate from their already-damaged properties. We hope Sunoco will be forthcoming about the investigation’s results.”

Last week we reported on the Kermit-Wink Sink, an area of West Texas that has sunk as much as 40 feet in the last 2.5 years due to oil exploration according to a report by SMU geo-physicists. Along the sink zone 2 water wells in the Santa Rosa aquifer used by the town of Kermit to supply water to residents were placed on the EPA’s Superfund site last summer due to a plume of two carcinogenic chemicals trichloroethene also known as Perc and tetrachloroethene. According to the Midland Reporter-Telegraph, two gas stations and two dry-cleaners in Kermit use the chemicals but have been cleared of being the source point for the toxins. A West Texas Wind source said that both chemicals are commonly used as a solvent in fracking fluids.

A private water developer was ultimately denied a permit to pump 46,000-acre feet a year from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. The presiding state judge Carson Campbell ruled on behalf of Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund that the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District denied local landowners from participating in the permitting process. “Judge Campbell’s ruling sets an important precedent for all of Texas,” said Michele Gangnes, a Lee County attorney and director of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund. “It means groundwater districts must recognize the property rights of all landowners in their groundwater and give them a voice on pumping permits that likely will affect the groundwater under their land.” Summer Webb, Culberson County Groundwater Conservation District manager, who’s district recently approved a 6000 acre-feet-a-year permit to Agua Grande LLC for oil field use said, “I have not kept up with this particular case closely enough to speak on the matter.”

The Dos Republicas Coal Mine near Eagle Pass Texas continues to export low quality lignite coal to the Mexican Electricity company known as CFE. The coal is burned at Carbon 1 and Carbon 2, in Piedras Negras, 10 miles from the Texas border, 20 miles from the Texas mine sight. The plant is the largest coal fired electricity plant in Central America. They are not fitted with anti-pollution scrubbers. According to the Bravo Study of 2004, Carbon 1 and Carbon 2, are the primary source of air pollution in the Big Bend region. National Parks Service stated that air quality in the BBNP is consistently the worst of all national parks.

APRIL

Reggie James, Executive Director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club spoke at the Crowley Theatre last Tuesday night in Marfa. James suggested that the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign that closed or phased out 240 coal plants in the country between 2009 and 2013 saved Americans 100 billion dollars in health costs. He said the legal strategy simple used laws already in place, primarily the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the Nixon Administration. The coal companies could not meet the pollution standards. Electricity generated nationally  by coal dropped from 50% in 2005 to less than 1/3 in 2012. James went on to say that fossils fuels, primarily gas and oil will likely die out in the next 30 years with the present level of subsidies and exclusions from environmental regulations. “Without the subsides and artificial support,” he said, “I would think fossil fuels dies 10 years earlier.” James said that renewable energy is already cheaper pointing out that 2/3 of all new electrical capacity installed in 2015 was wind or solar.

The Black-Capped Vireo will be struck from the endangered species list on May 15^th. The song bird found in parts of Oklahoma, Mexico, and Texas including the Big Bend was listed in 1987 due to loss of habitat and nesting parasitism by brown-headed cowbirds. The US Fish and Wildlife states in the Federal Register that the bird is now viable due to population management of the cow birds who habitually stole eggs from the nesting vireos and replaced them with their own. Cowbird management may be needed perpetually to ensure the species remains off the endangered list.

San Antonio solar energy capacity grew 37% in 2017, the 6th highest increase in the nation according to Environment Texas. Meantime El Paso ranked 18th among US cities in total solar energy with 37 megawatts installed. However, Environment Texas warned that El Paso Electric's new grid fees for home solar installation could destroy the move toward household renewable energy. EPE generates most of its energy from fossil fuel plants excluding coal, 16% from nuclear and the balance from renewable sources.

International Paper Co. and McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corp. agreed to pay $115 million dollars to clean up the Superfund Site in Houston known as the San Jacinto Waste Pits. For nearly fifty years the two companies dumped carcinogenic waste including dioxins into the Houston water shed. The EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will oversee the cleanup process.

A lot of plastic has gone to sea since the first Texas Beach Clean-up in 1986. Led by the Ocean Conservancy, 2800 volunteers collected 110 tons of debris that year along Texas coasts. Last year half a million volunteers worldwide lifted 8300 tons of beach trash, 90 % of it plastic. But just a drop in the bucket according to Chemical & Engineering News. They estimated that 5 trillion pieces of plastic litter the seven seas. The No.1 culprit; cigarette butts, followed by bottles, caps, food wrappers and plastic grocery bags.

The US Bank shareholders meeting in Albuquerque this week was disrupted by fracking and pipeline activists. The protesters questioned the banks investments in the methane gas industry including pipeline operator Dallas-based Energy Transfer. NASA scientists identified a giant methane cloud hanging over the Chaco caused by fugitive gas leaks from gas wells and pipelines in the highly-fracked region. The bank recently received the 2018 Ethnosphere “Ethics” awards for good stewardship. One activist commented that the bank's investment strategy was unethical and their attempts to explain the billions of dollars loaned to the oil industry was quote “sleezy.”

Dallas-based Energy Transfer, owners of the under-construction Mariner II pipeline in Pennsylvania, cutdown three old growth pine trees early Sunday morning. The trees had been home to several crows and anti-pipeline activists. The activists held their ground for over a year blocking construction of the methane pipeline. Property owner Ellen Gerhart told the Pittsburg Gazette that activists had come down from their fifty-foot perch the night before due to high winds. “We managed to hold them off from building the pipeline through our property, so I’d call that a partial victory.” she said. She also noted that the security company Tiger Swan had been surveilling the trees for several months. The three former trees grew next to the company’s right-of-way, acquired through eminent domain. Energy Transfer is owned by billionaire Kelcy Warren, who is also on the Board of Directors for the Texas Parks & Wildlife.

Beaumont-Port Arthur are on the verge of exceeding federal air quality standards according to TxDOT. In response, the state government agency is launching DRIVE CLEAN TEXAS asking drivers to do their part to help improve air quality including turning off their vehicles when not in use. There are 20 million registered vehicles in Texas. TxDOT has no jurisdiction on industrial pollution. Meantime 3 Tx metro areas Houston, Dallas-FtWorth and El Paso are already considered to be in non-attainment under the Clean Air Act. Beaumont-Port Arthur join Tyler, Corpus Christi, Victoria, San Antonio and Austin in the “near non-attainment” category. EPA Director Scott Pruitt has suggested that the Clean Air Act is destabilizing the American economy.

 Susan Bodine, EPA Enforcement Chief, encouraged US businesses to comply with environmental laws or risk fines, loss of reputation, and debarment from federal contracts. Bodine, speaking at the EarthX Earth day event in Dallas last Sunday said in regards to non-compliance, “Im shocked that they’re happening as often as they do happen.” She noted that the emissions cheating scandal cost Volkswagen 4.3 $billion in civil and criminal fines and also noted smaller examples such as Tyson Foods recent 2 million fine for dumping chicken waste water into a municipal sewer. Bodine was confirmed for the position last December with bi-partisan approval.

With 3 Texas cities non-compliant with the Clean Air Act and five others nearly there, a court ruling this week could help change the air quality of these Texas cities. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Trump Administration violated the law by delaying higher penalties for automakers who did not comply with fuel economy standards. California, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Maryland sued the government over the delay. Environmentalists called it a “victory for common sense.”

Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, the 102,000 acre preserve next to Big Bend National Park is a vote away from adding another 16,000 acres. The Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission will vote May 24thin Lubbock on the purchase of the 25 square mile tract that includes 7 miles of Rio Grande frontage. The area will provide habitat for black bear, mountain lion, javalina, Gambel's and scaled quail and other endemic species.

Fossil fuel giants Chevron Corp and British Petroleum along with other energy entities have endorsed a new lobbying group called Energy Advance that will promote carbon capture, utilization and storage. But EE News reports that the link between carbon capture and the oil industry has caused some controversy as of late, after the Natural Resources Defense Council declined to participate in a newly formed carbon capture coalition because of concerns about boosting fossil fuel consumption. Petro Nova, a coal burning utility southwest of Houston who recently refit their plant to capture up to 90% of its CO2 emissions continues to emit other aerosol pollutants including mercury, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and soot. Moreover, coal ash which contains cadmium, lead, mercury and arsenic continue to build up at the Petro Nova facility and has not been addressed by the carbon capture coalition.

The sailfin armored catfish, a native of South America, may have expanded its territory through the tributaries of Galveston Bay during Hurricane Harvey. The US Geological Survey tracks over 1270 nonindigenous species and their pathways through storm tracker maps. Floods increase the possibility for creatures to migrate. The sailfin digs underwater hutches which can create erosion in canals. The giant apple snail, also an intrusive species, likely expanded its territory beyond Galveston, during Harvey. This big snail flood travels by filling its lungs with air and floats. The creature can pass a parasite that births a type of meningitis in humans known as rat lung disease.

Hidalgo County in south Texas is not only the poorest county in the state but it also, at 71%, has the largest percentage of people in Texas who believe and are concerned about climate change, according to a poll by Yale University. But why Hidalgo County? Scott Waldman of EE News says its farm workers who experience climate change more than most. He writes, “In Hidalgo County, they experience a warming world while they're in the fields. Sometimes, they see onions yellow and wither before they're harvested, taking a day's pay. Some worry that their babies could be born with small heads if mosquitoes from the irrigation canals slip through a hole in the screen. Others watch a hand-dug well in their backyard begin offering brown water before going dry.”

Energy Secretary Rick Perry's son owns a private investment firm that's seeking investors for a new energy fund, raising some ethics concerns. Griffin Perry is one of three co-owners of Grey Rock Energy Partners, which notified the Securities and Exchange Commission last week that it was offering Grey Rock Energy Fund III-B. It represents the first new fund the firm has offered since Rick Perry joined President Trump's Cabinet, and the offering comes as other Cabinet-level officials — most notably EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt —are facing ethics scandals. Watchdog groups worry that Griffin Perry could benefit from his father's policy decisions without the public catching on. Current investment rules don't require much public disclosure about private funds. "The lack of transparency in these types of funds greatly inhibits our ability to meaningfully identify and monitor conflicts of interest arising from his son's business," said Virginia Canter, legal counsel on executive branch issues for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Conflicts can arise from both the underlying assets being managed by Grey Rock and the investors in Grey Rock." The other main concern from watchdogs is that conflict-of-interest rules for politicians only apply to spouses and young kids, not grown children.

Vincent DeVito, an Interior Department employee with ties to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Trump Election campaign and the billionaire hydrocarbon brothers Koch of Kansas, has taken credit for delaying the Endangered Species listing of the Texas Hornshell Mussel, according to documents obtained by The Guardian. Endangered Species designations are often problematic to the oil&gas industry especially when habitat overlaps hydrocarbons. Former Texas comptroller Susan Combs who is also in the Trump Interior Department has referred to endangered species as “incoming Scud missiles.” The Comb’s family fortune was made primarily through West Texas oil&gas revenues.

MAY

There are no federal regulations to protect people living close to oil&gas drilling sites who breathe toxic emissions day in day out according to an article in Climate Insider, titled “Fracking Boom Spews Toxic Emissions on Texas Residents.” In regards to the Permian Basin, where half of the nation's drilling rigs are working, often within feet of residences, Sharon Wilson of Earthworks said, “The oil and gas industry has been promising to contain their air pollution for over a decade and they have repeatedly broken that promise. They are not containing their emissions anywhere and especially not in the Permian where expansion is out of control and regulators are AWOL. Instead of expanding fossil fuel use we need a rapid managed decline.” According to state records from 2008 to 2017, drilling permits went up by nearly 5000 per cent while the TCEQ budget was slashed 35%.

Houston based Eagle LNG has hired Brian Ballard a lobbyist with ties to Donald Trump to promote LNG exports. Politico reports that Ballard is “closer to the President than perhaps any other lobbyist in town.” Ballard raised millions of dollars for the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. LNG is methane that’s been cooled to a negative 167 C, compressed. In that state it becomes more suitable for export by ship due to its density and reduced volume.

Eric Lundgren's California company recycled 41 million pounds of electronic waste per year – but now he's going to prison. Lundgren pirated thousands of copies of outdated Microsoft Windows operating systems to keep older computers out of the landfill -but an appeals court said despite the good work he must carry out a 15-month sentence for copyright infringement. According to the Washington Post, Senior US District Judge Daniel Hurley told Lundgren, “This is a difficult sentencing, because I credit everything you are telling me, you are a very remarkable person."

Greenpeace is launching the Plastic-Free Future Campaign demanding corporations to phase out single-use plastics. Seven thousand pieces of single use plastic trash was analyzed in 31 cities by Greenpeace this year where they identified Pepsi, Nestle and Coca-Cola as the worst contributors. Ninety per cent of all plastics ends up in landfills and waterways that eventually flow into the ocean. A new report states that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Greenpeace's press release stated, “The real solution is to reduce plastic production at the source, which means using our people power to demand companies come up with better ways of packaging products.”

Odessa, Texas is the place for the best-paying jobs in America, if you have no college education. According to National Public Radio the average blue-collar worker there earns 37,000 per year. Odessa also has the highest violent crime rate in the state, the 6^th worst air, and the 7^th worst traffic.

Governor Abbott in his bid to seek re-election and partner with Trump's border wall vision, hurled two not so accurate statements at the National Rifle Assoc conference in Dallas this week. Stating that a 200% spike in March apprehensions along the border this year justified bringing in the National Guard. He also said another 200% spike in heroin occurred. Figures show that heroin and migrant apprehension interceptions along the US Mexico border have been going down steadily since 2005. Texas Standard called the quotes, “mostly false.”

Alvin, Texas lost their 24-hour national rain record. The island of Kauai experienced 49 inches in 24 hours last month. Alvin's record was 43 inches during Hurricane Claudette in 1977. Also in the Pacific, a super typoon named Jelewat danced around the Mariana Islands this month sustaining 150 MPH winds earning CAT 4 status and remarkable early in the typhoon year.

Former TX governor Rick Perry, who was instrumental in obtaining a radio-active waste dump permit in Andrews for Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons company Waste Control Specialists in 2009, is now expanding its scope. Only a Senate vote away from facilitating nuclear waste dumping from all fifty states at an Andrews, Texas site as President Trump's Energy Secretary. The House legislation which passed 340 to 72 this week will move to the Senate later this month. Andrews is the only licensed facility in the country to handle all categories of radio-active waste and will be used until Yucca Mountain in Nevada is completed, which may take decades. Karen Hadden, director of the the Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition said, “The whole nation could be at risk from an unprecedented mass movement of high-level radioactive waste across the nation, with 10,000 rail cars of deadly waste being transported over a period of 20 or more years." Texas House Republican representatives voted unanimously for the bill while Beto O'Rourke and Al Green, and most democrats, opposed the legislation.

This might be hard to fathom to West Texans, but scientists are saying surface winds have declined by 25% since the 1970s. The cause: warmer temperatures. At Risk: wind-blown seeds, wind energy and, as the be-calming of Europe's 2016-2017 deadly winter indicates – more urban air pollution. Meantime ocean and polar winds are increasing.

Minneapolis joined Georgetown, Texas and 63 other US cities to commit to 100% renewable energy.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said, “One effective way to make sure that energy remains affordable and that the transition to clean energy meets the needs of those most marginalized and historically impacted by pollution is persistent and intentional community engagement from a wide range of people. Resolutions like the one we passed today are more than just a statement of values – they’re a roadmap for shifting our systems to serve everyone in our communities."

El Paso, San Antonio and McAllen are in the top ten list for allergies according to the American Academy for Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Warmer, wetter winters are part of the problem. Dr Clifford Bassett, author of The New Allergy Solution, said, “Climate change, globalization, air pollution, and over-sanitization of the environment in the early years of life are just a few of the causes that, taken together, have introduced new allergens into our environment causing needless suffering.”

An unclassified toxic waste dump leeching near Dripping Springs is under investigation. KXAN Austin set up game cameras at the site after a tip from local Jimi Lovejoy and found TxDot workers dumping everything from tar and pesticides to dead deer at the site. Lovejoy said, “It’s illegal to dump this stuff. If I dumped it, I would be fined and probably go to jail... For me and you, it’s ‘Don’t Mess with Texas.’ But, for TxDot...they can do whatever they want.”

The wild population of a specific red wolf species has crashed to about 40 individuals including just 3 breeding pair according to Revelator Magazine. This eastern US species of the wolf had 120 count in 2012 until nighttime hunting of coyotes was permitted in 2013. The new North Carolina statute led to alleged accidental killings of the wolf which look similar to coyotes. A recent US Fish & Wildlife report states, “The red wolf does not have the adequate numbers or multiple resilient populations needed for the species to persist in the wild.” The Eastern Red Wolf is expected to be extinct by 2025. Captive breeding facilities, which plan to supply the endangered Mexican Gray Wolf for the Re-Wolf Texas project, may be the only future solution for wolf survival.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the left leaning Mexican Presidential candidate, is leading the polls by double digits according to Bloomberg News. A victory in the July 1^st elections for Lopez could be bad news for US Oil&gas interests. Lopez-Obrador is pushing for a referendum on the 2014 law that de-nationalized Mexico's PEMEX, the only provider of oil&gas products in Mexico for 75 years. After the law was passed oil giants Exxon-Mobile and Chevron jumped at the chance to drill off shore Mexico, while US exports of methane to Mexico from the Eagle-Ford in south Texas boomed. The Houston Chronicle suggests that Lopez Obrador's Morena party is also polling strong in other contests, making the likelihood that foreign oil&gas may have to re-strategize their relationship with the world's 12th largest oil producer.

West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania merge on the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Now rich withshale gas the three states combined pump more methane than Texas. But according to Energy Wire some residents are frustrated by what they see as state laws that are slanted to favor the gas industry. "I bought this farm for the privacy," said Lee Martin of Mobley, West Virginia. "When the gas industry came in here, I knew that my dream place was shattered." Two pipelines down the road from Martin's carry gas to market and 12 more lurk in the vicinity, each harnessed with compression stations, gathering lines, pumps, valves, and blowdown vents. Martin continued “Wherever they're putting these pipelines at, they just go ahead and do whatever they do, basically, and they don't care about the people there."

As Houston prepares for the hurricane season, cement and concrete will be the most common material used to fortify infrastructure against climate-change fueled storms and rising seas. Unfortunately the two primary stages of cement production emit colossal amounts of CO2, the gas most responsible for green-house warming. Moreover, the Washington Post suggests that cement along with black-gumbo clay soil is the main reason the 4^th largest city in the country floods so often. A NOAA graph showing surfaces in Houston suggest that more than half of the city is impermeable.

Exxon-Mobil will request an air pollution variance from the county commissioners next week in Corpus Christi. Exxon plans to build the world's largest ethane cracker on Capana Bay. The plant will produce feedstock for plastics. They are also proposing to dump 9 million gallons of super-heated water daily into the bay. Corpus Christi water temps according to NOAA are already 2.3 degrees hotter this month than average.

An Alaska commission established after the Texas-based tanker “Exxon Valdez” grounded, spilling tons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, is pushing the state of Alaska to buy land targeted for coal mining. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council is petitioning the state to buy 11,000 acres of the Behring River Coal Field to prevent it from being mined. "This is an historic opportunity to secure the well-being of the entire region," Dune Lankard, the group's executive director, wrote. "To not ensure the conservation and protection of one of the most pristine wild salmon regions on the planet would be a colossal mistake." According to E&E News, the Nature Conservancy has filed a letter of interest for the land. The Korea Alaska Development Corp., of Seoul, South Korea, owns the coal field.

A recent Harvard University student hypothesis on how the West Texas wine industry could benefit from organic farming techniques proved negative. The study concluded West Texas fungal, insects, weather, disease vectors and other biotic stresses make viticulture without protection of synthetic fungicides, herbicides and pesticides extremely challenging. However, the report did say that lowering the weight of glass wine bottles from 3.75 pounds to 3 pounds can significantly improve the environmental performance of the West Texas wine industry.

This week US Fish&Wildlife down listed a small Texas cactus, the Tobusch Fishhook Cactus, from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Improved numbers of observed sitings were the reason for the down listing according to the federal government. Listed as endangered in 1979 when only 200 plants were said to exist, today nearly 3000 individuals are known across 105 sites in west-central Texas. Fish&Wildlife attribute state, private landowners and conservation groups as the key to the plants revival.

A carbon tax, designed to financially punish corporations that emit green-house warming CO2 gas into the atmosphere, will likely increase the cost of fossil fuels and theoretically slow climate change by reduced consumption. The Houston Chronicle reports that ten states are proposing bills later this year that could put various CO2 tax plans into effect. California's system, similar to a carbon tax but more market friendly, allows corporations to profit when they emit less CO2 than their allotment by selling their credits to those that can't. California's Cap &Trade system has been in effect since 2007 and in Europe since 2004. Mexico and China are studying ways of disincentivizing financial rewards for CO2  emissions and Canada has already implemented a CO2 tax in some provinces. But will Texas, home of Big Oil&Gas allow it? It might be a good question for the governor's debate. In a recent Yale University Poll, nearly 60% of Americans believe that burning fossil fuels is the major cause of climate change including a hard to believe 52% of Texans.

The city of San Francisco has filed a lawsuit against Chevron. BP, Shell, Conoco-Phillips and Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil. The suit alleges the oil companies produce products that create climate change and moreover knew about the effects of their product decades ago but hid the information to protect profits. Federal Judge William Alsup over-ruled BP's argument to dismiss the case yesterday, therefore allowing discovery proceedings, allowing plaintiffs to seek documents that show the oil giants knew about climate risks years ago. E&E News reports that reparations of this kind are similar to the tobacco settlements of the 1990's. Ann Carlson of UCLA told E&E that “it is a big deal” that discovery is now allowed. “One of the big important things that happened in the tobacco litigation is we started to uncover information about defendant concealment. That could be very damaging to the fossil fuel companies.” Meantime Exxon-Mobil faces a similar reparation case in New York City after losing home court advantage when a federal judge in Texas ruled the case was New York's business.

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Oklahoma that shook the Great Plains including north Texas is being blamed on the oil&gas industry. In a class-action suit brought by 400 people who lived in an area near Pawnee and suffered damages in the 2011 tremblor are seeking damages against Tulsa-based energy company New Dominion. Regulators had considered restricting the Pawnee area from additional deep injection wells where oil and gas toxics are dumped. Scott Poynter, the attorney representing the plaintiffs said, "We intend to prove in September the science behind induced seismicity and how these quakes in 2011 were caused by New Dominion's operations.”

US House Representative Lamar Smith, Republican-San Antonio who wrote an essay last year on why more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to better quality food has not responded to a recent scientific study that suggests, just the opposite. The essay, printed in The Daily Signal, an offshoot of the Kansas-based Koch Brothers funded think tank, The Heritage Foundation, stated that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will stimulate plant growth, generating "a greater volume of food production and better-quality food.” However, the scientific study released in Science Advances shows that of the 18 varieties of rice examined, all become less nutritious when cultivated in high carbon dioxide environments, including losses in protein, zinc and B vitamins. One of the authors of the study, Chunwu Zhu, wrote, "These results indicate that the role of rising CO2 on reducing rice quality may represent a fundamental, but underappreciated, human health effect associated with anthropogenic climate change.”

JUNE

A Louisiana state judge ruled that a permit allowing Dallas-based Energy Transfer to build a 17-mile segment of the Bayou Bridge oil pipeline is illegal. Judge Alvin Turner determined that the Louisiana State Department of Natural Resources failed to consider public and environmental protections when issuing the permit in St James Parish. Despite the judge’s ruling construction on the project continues as local citizen and environmental groups cry foul. Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards has not addressed the matter. The pipeline spans a total of 169 miles from Lake Charles to the Mississippi River crossing 8 major water sheds of the nation’s largest river-fed swamp. The Atchafalaya, often called America's Wetland, covers one million acres and is habitat for 275 species of birds including the largest rookery in the south for nesting bald eagles.

Fueled by big losses during Hurricane Harvey, insurance companies want tougher, sturdier standards for homes along the Texas coast. According to the Wall Street Journal, home insurance policies are pushing building standards that are often stricter than local codes. Bill O'Bryant who is rebuilding his home in Rockport told the WSJ, “"We really wouldn't do this any other way.” Some of the new insurance requirements include steel roofs, impact-resistant glass, and more cement in concrete mixes. Risk consultants say that in the age of rising sea levels and more severe storms, higher building codes are needed for a healthy insurance market.

A stray drum of nuclear waste set off alarms last week about thirty miles from the Texas border. A worker apparently holding a Geiger counter at New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, a facility that buries radioactive waste from the production of nuclear bombs, found the barrel emitting radiation beeps. The facility was evacuated but later declared stable. Donavan Mager, a spokesman with Nuclear Waste Partnership LLC, told the AP that officials will have to develop a careful plan to re-enter the underground section and deal with the drum. The dump site was chosen because of the underground salt formations found in the area, which are believed to enhance sarcophism.

Siting three Texas cities that are non-compliant with the Clean Air Act and 6 others on the verge, TxDOT is promoting the Drive Clean Texas campaign. This program asks drivers to keep their tires properly inflated, avoid jack-rabbit starts and stops, don't overfill gas tanks, make sure gas caps are fully closed and turn your engine off when not driving.

Houston-based energy corporation Dynegy is being sued for polluting the Middle Fork of the Vermillion River in Illinois with toxic coal ash. The suit claims that the orange and purple muck amassed at a Dynegy shuttered coal plant is concentrated with arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese and other heavy metals. 17 miles of the river is protected under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and it joins the Rio Grande in being one of the ten most threatened rivers in America.

Austin Independent School District revealed this week that five more of its schools' drinking water fountains are contaminated with lead, making a total of 14. Environment Texas reports that the American Academy of Pediatrics states “even at half the levels previously considered safe, growing evidence shows a child’s exposure to lead can cause irreversible cognitive and behavioral problems...including lower IQ scores and academic performance, inattention, impulsivity, aggression and hyperactivity.” The district will continue testing and plan to install filters.

The Hal Flanders Recycling Center in Alpine was re-opened after the gates were locked for over a month. The operating budget has been reduced to $4,000 a year and new rules allow only Alpine residents to use the facility. Terlingua citizens met last Wednesday to decide whether they will open their own recycling center.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is setting its own limits on how much climate change data they will use in determining the pros and cons of pipeline projects. But a federal court earlier this year said that if the climate data is available FERC must use it. The Republican majority FERC commission however denied a re-hearing of a pipeline project that was greenlighted last month without climate change analysis. The use of climate change data to determine the overall effects of fossil fuel infrastructure expansion had been gradually increasing under the Obama administration. The new trend of the Trump administration apparently is to discount scientific analysis on pipeline construction determinations and may affect public health while increasing greenhouse gasses. Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club said, “The people demanded FERC do its job and FERC refused. Then the courts ordered FERC to do its job but instead it just keeps trying to evade the court’s order and shirk its responsibilities. FERC has broken the people’s trust and we are exploring our options in response to today’s vote.”

Oil&Gas corporations and the State of Texas led by felony-indicted attorney general Ken Paxton, received a victory in the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals this week where a 3-judge panel delayed enforcement of an Obama regulation designed to reduce methane gas leaks on federal lands. An Earth Justice attorney who represented an environmental coalition said “We are disappointed the Tenth Circuit is allowing the flawed state of these common-sense provisions to remain in effect. As the court recognized this means the many benefits of the rule will not be realized – public resources will be wasted, communities will lose out on economic benefits and local residents will suffer the impacts of toxic and smog-forming pollution.”

The trillions of gallons of water need to frack the Permian Basin gas boom is igniting friction between neighboring states. New Mexico Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn told the Texas Observer, “Texas is stealing New Mexico’s water.” Private Texas land owners along the state line with New Mexico are pumping underground water that is not restricted and shipping it across the border. State and county regulations in New Mexico limit the amount of water that can be pumped while certain Texas counties including those along the border in the Permian have no groundwater districts. Moreover, the Rule of Capture, the over-arching water law of Texas, has been called the law of the biggest straw meaning you can pump as much as you want regardless of whether you suck your neighbors dry. Dunn went on to say, “If you put a whole bunch of straws in Texas and you don’t have any straws in New Mexico, you’re sucking all the water from under New Mexico out in Texas and then selling it back to New Mexico.”

Former Texas governor Rick Perry now Energy Secretary is using war time federal emergency tactics to save coal plants. Robert Murray, owner of the country’s largest coal mining group, and a large donator to President Trump’s and Perry’s various political campaigns, has pleaded with the duo to save his coal plants from a large run of recent national coal plant closings. According to Bloomberg News, the President told Perry, to quote “get it done.” Perry intends to force grid operators to buy coal power. Meantime billionaire Michael Bloomberg said that the 200 plus coal plant closings since 2005 have saved over a quarter million pre-mature deaths.

Smog continues to creep into the Big Bend as oil&gas drilling in the Permian and Alpine High crank to record levels. Alpine, Texas about 50 miles south of the oil fields, had ozone levels higher or the same as Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Corpus Christi for five consecutive days this week according to figures obtained from government websites. Ozone is the atmospheric phenomena that creates smog through a combination of fossil-fuel derived gasses like nitrous oxide and volatile organic compounds including carcinogens toluene and benzene that when cooked with sunlight creates respiratory poison. On Tuesday Midland-Odessa registered 119 on the ozone scale ranking 4th nationally after Pahala, Hawaii, Ponce, Puerto Rico and the UTE Reservation in southern Colorado.

In a follow the $ story, the hydrocarbon billionaire brothers of Koch Industries Inc. Bill and David, who have been accused of buying elections nationwide by donating billions of dollars to politicians who favor their free-market capitalist practices, have acquired 20,000 shares in FirstEnergy Corp. this year according to E&E News. First Energy, the 58th largest polluter in the USA, is a coal utility who is pleading with Donald Trump and former Texas governor Rick Perry to save the coal industry from clean energy by mandating electricity be bought by grid operators from coal fired plants. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump has told Perry to “Make it Happen.”

Breaking the link between work and consumption might be a potential vector for future human survival. With 8 billion cell phones, 2 billion cars, 5 billion heads of livestock including 12 million cows in Texas alone and enough concrete poured to cover the planet, a new way of living with a focus on environmental repair likely requires a disconnect from ever-increasing consumption. Two new systems according to The Guardian are being energetically discussed by minds outside the military-industrial-capitalist complex. In a book called The Human Planet, written by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, Universal Basic Income or UBI, suggests that credit transfers just above subsistence sent to every human on Earth could stabilize and reduce consumption by guaranteeing sufficient necessities to live while interrupting the work-consumption reward pattern established by consumer-based capitalism. The second system, called Half-Earth would dedicate half the planets land surface for the rectification of other species.

The nation’s only felony-indicted state official, Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, issued a letter this week defending the carbon barons. He stated “It is absurd to place the blame for climate change on only a few energy companies in America when the root causes of climate change are complex and not fully understood.” Scientists on the other hand contend that burning 20 billion tons of fossil fuels annually in a finite space are fully understood and assuredly cause climate change. A court case in New York City against Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil for damages caused by climate change will seek to determine when Exxon knew about their products effect on climate and whether they tried to cover it up. Former California Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stated they knew as far back as 1959.Other sources are pointing to an Exxon document produced in 1978. The Sierran editor Jason Mark wrote last month, “The Carbon Barons are guilty not only of fraud but also of reckless negligence, of failing to use their early knowledge about climate change risks to shift the direction of human affairs. You can decide not to indulge in luxury emissions like a trip to Europe, but such abstinence will do almost nothing to reduce global warming. The Carbon Barons are in a different position. When they learned that their products could be catastrophic, they had the ability to intervene in the course of history. They possessed the scientific awareness, the economic might, and the political influence to have avoided climate chaos. And they chose not to.”

Led by Governor Abbot, Texas Republicans easily de-funded an ombudsmen bill that coordinated state programs and services for the more than 2300 colonias along the Texas border. The estimated 500,000 people that live in the colonias have a poverty rate three times the national average according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Most of the colonias lie in the flood plains of the lower Rio Grande Valley in south Texas where basic services such as clean water, street lights, sanitation systems, paved roads, public transport and drainage are non-existent. Many worry about floods. Former Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos told Thomson Reuters Foundation News that government funding to improve conditions should be a health and safety priority saying, “If it rains, literally everything comes to the surface. We could end up with epidemics. We are the United States, and we are supposed to have a much higher quality of life.” Jesus Suarez, who lives in the colonia Indian Hills East said, “Last year, the entire colonia flooded. Water everywhere. It was full of mosquitoes.” Nick Mitchell-Bennett, head of the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville said, “Poor people just get the short end of the stick continuously, and climate change is just another thing they are going to have to deal with.” With rising seas and heavy rains becoming more common, colonias, now even less in the state government radar, face an ever more challenging environment.

A 2.3 cent per kilowatt hour contract pending regulators’ approval for a planned solar plant in Nevada represents the cheapest potential energy production in the country. The Eagle Shadow solar powerplant is part of an NV Energy proposal to add 1 GW of renewables to its energy grid. Meantime there’sbuzz out of Austin that a solar plant deal with the city for a 2.1 cent per KW hour may be the cheapest in the world.

JULY

An on and off again wood pellets factory in Woodville Maybe on again. The German owned company sought insolvency protection in Koln last year and received a green light recently to proceed in bankruptcy, but the Sierra Club and local residents like Lisa Sanchez are keeping a close eye. “I started having a lot of respiratory problems, I was getting sick all the time. I have emergency inhalers, I was on all kinds of things. I have asthma now.” Sanchez told the Guardian after moving close to the factory. The plant, called German Pellets, produced in its last year of full operation, over half a million tons of wood pellets for export to Europe. The Sierra Club has accused the plant of violating Texas air emission laws. They describe the facility as a “monument to Europe’s climate sins.” According to Mother Jones, UK-researchers found that burning wood is a “disaster” for climate change because older trees release large amounts of carbon when they burn and aren’t always replaced with replanted forests. it can take up to 100 years to cultivate forests that soak up as much carbon as was previously released. And the fuel burned in cargo ships carrying wood pellets to Europe is also a source of emissions. William Schlesinger of the EPA advisory board said, “Philosophically it looks good but practically it looks pretty bad in many cases. When you cut down existing trees and burn them, you immediately put carbon dioxide in the air. The whole renewable forest industry is kind of a hoax in terms of its benefit as climate mitigation.” Meantime former EPA Director Scott Pruitt announced before his resignation that wood pellets should be considered a renewable energy.

Just short of blaming Mexico for their poor air quality, San Antonio’s Diane Rath of the Alamo Area Council of Governments is suggesting that foreign sourced pollutants are why the state’s third largest city has failed to meet safe federal ozone levels for the past three years. According to the Rivard Report, Rath said that San Antonio’s air would meet the health standard if it weren’t for pollution blowing in from other countries. A federal determination on whether Bexar County must enact stricter air quality regulation is set for July 17. San Antonio has three coal-fired electricity plants.

The state government of Texas seems to have handed the oil&gas industry yet another break. The TECQ ruled that TESLA electric cars are not eligible for electrification incentives. The incentives, designed to create non-fossil fuel opportunities for consumers, black-listed TESLA, the largest player in the non-fossil fuel vehicle arena because TESLA has no dealerships in the Lone Star State. All TESLA cars are sold direct form the manufacturer.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service urged a Federal judge in Midland to reject a lawsuit that claims the golden-cheeked warbler is being kept on the Endangered Species List unreasonable. The FWS told the court that despite gains in population the bird remains endangered. The warbler is dependent on the mature bark of Ash-Juniper trees for their nests. The trees, once common in the Texas hill-country, have been reduced by over 50% in the last 50 years for pasture and housing development according to The Audubon Magazine.

China’s ban on imported recycled plastic has forced the City of Alpine to stop accepting plastic at the Hal Flander’s Recycling Center. The Chinese plastic ban is affecting American recyclers nationwide as tons of poly propylene and other plastics are creating mountains of post-consumer waste. “Long term this could be a good thing,“ Paula Birchler of recycler Lautenbach Industries told the San Juan Journal. “It could help us find out how to use less.” Recycled plastic, scrap metal and waste paper had been the No.6 US export category to China prior to the ban. The Chinese declared that there was too many contaminants with imported waste plastics. Some suggest that the burgeoning Chinese economy has created their own problem with throw-away consumer plastics.

Awty International School’s Olivier Logette, the school's sustainability coordinator, teaches Awty students about recycling plastic, glass and paper but also challenges students to up-cycle, compost and refurbish harder waste items such as kitchen scraps, pens, pencils, ink cartridges, batteries and electronics. The Houston school hopes to be the first zero waste campus in Texas.

A commercial water permit that’s been on hold for a year as the Brewster County Groundwater Conservation District re-writes its by-laws, will have its day in court this Thursday at the district monthly meeting in Alpine. Rancher Jake Stubbs is requesting 238 acre feet of water per year for his client CBD Aggregates who will lease and mine rock on the Stubb’s ranch in northwestern Brewster County.

George P Bush, head of the Texas General Land Office, has approved a joint venture with water developer Layne Christensen instituting the first official state government/private corporation water export plan. 88,000acres of GLO lands in Reeves and Culberson will be available to pump aquifer water to oil and gas companies fracking in the Delaware Basin. Layne Christenson owned by Granite Construction of California, stated the water was brackish and therefore not subject to groundwater conservation district jurisdiction. If the aquifer water is indeed brackish, and some suggest it is not brackish but potable, the 1903 state law called the Rule of Capture will theoretically apply. This rule, famously titled the Rule of the Biggest Straw by attorney Tom Beard, essentially allows no limits to the amount of water that can be pumped. Layne Chief Financial Officer Michael Anderson told the Houston Chronicle, “This is kind of a gold mine in the making.” As of press time, a West Texas Wind interview request with George P Bush on the matter has not been granted.

A Texas state representative from Wimberly didn’t like what his 12-year-old son was bringing home from his science class. “They are striking fear in children that oil and gas and coal are bad,” Jason Isaac, Republican District 45 told the Austin American Statesman. Isaac, together with the Texas Natural Gas Foundation, created a guide to help teachers teach about the good side of fossil fuels. In a University of Texas review of the guide The head of the UT’s Environmental Science Institute commented that the guide claims that “devastation of our social and economic systems will result from switching away from the use of non-renewables.” So far a total of 19 teachers have trained with the study guide program statewide.

Fort Stockton, Austin, Brownsville and 11 other Texas cities will no longer be able to enforce a plastic bag ban. Challenged by state Attorney General Ken Paxton last year, the plastic bag ban was deemed illegal at the Texas Supreme court level last month. Some suggest the ban was an affront to the oil&gas industry, who supply ethane, the primary feed stock for poly-ethylene bags. Meantime the Indian state of Maharashtra, whose main plastics dump covers 200 football fields 40 feet high, has banned plastic packaging this month — bags, Styrofoam, takeout containers, and cutlery. According to NPR, the goal is for all of India to do the same by 2022.

The proposed world’s largest ethane cracker, a joint venture between Exxon-Mobile and a Saudi Arabian company called SABIC, is moving closer to reality. The plastics factory, scheduled to start producing in 2021 near the Port of Corpus Christi, has received wide spread support from industry and local and state governments. SABIC CEO Yousef Al-Benyan said, “We look forward to the next phase of the project, which supports not only our goals for global diversification, but also supports Saudi Vision 2030.” Environmentalists suggest the plant will raise the water temperatures dramatically in the Corpus Christi estuary. Estuary waters are already 2 degrees above normal according to NOAA. Moreover the environmentalists suggest more plastic is exactly what the planet doesn’t need.

The not so strong arm of the Trump Administration's Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Houston-based Energy XXI CEO John Schiller with failing to disclose more than $10 million in personal loans and perks from corporate vendors and board members according to the Houston Chronicle. The company is engaged in off-shore oil&gas drilling. SEC enforcement officer Anita Band said, "Secret backroom deals for the benefit of corporate insiders violate those duties and deprive investors of important information." Schiller will have to pay $180,000 fine and go to church for three Sundays in a row.

According to a report from Climate Central the number of summer days above normal temperatures has been trending upwards. 92% of the 244 cities in the analysis are above the norm of the past fifty-year average. The biggest temperature increases are happening in Louisiana, Florida and Texas. Heat stroke, respatory illness and electrical bills are also up. The US Energy Information Act in 2015 states that American Households are spending more on air conditioning than any other part of their electric bills.

New EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler, who replaced Scott Pruitt, seems to be following in his predecessors’ footsteps. The former lobbyist for major fossil fuel producers including coal has indicated he will continue the path of the Trump Administration's deconstruction of environmental protections. So far 46 bills have been introduced that will allow fossil fuel producers to pollute more. These bills include modification of the Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

According to records obtained from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Energy Transfer of Dallas will build a compressor station for the 42-inch Trans Pecos Pipeline at the Rio Grande. The crossing located about 10 miles west of Presidio will likely include multi-engine jet turbines to push methane gas into Mexico. A valve station is already located at the site. In February over 3000 tons of methane gas along with volatile organic compounds including ethane, pentane and isobutane were vented at the site into the atmosphere. A neighbor two miles away said it was like being at an airport runway listening to Jets take off for five straight days. According to the TECQ this was a legal emission event.

The American Petroleum Institute, not satisfied with a string of victories obtained for the industry by the Trump Administration, now suggests the tariffs on imported steel is “misguided.” Seventy-five per cent of American pipeline content are built with foreign steel, despite a campaign promise by Trump that pipes would be built exclusively in America. Over twenty thousand tariff waivers have been sought by American corporations and only 241 have been processed according to the Washington Examiner. Shell and Chevron received waivers for imported pipeline steel last Thursday.

The fracking industry methane leakage rate is 2.3% according to a five-year study released last month by the Environmental Defense Fund. The amount is nearly double the government's estimate. Food & Water Watch ED Wenonah Hauter said the figure is “conservative.” She issued a statement this week suggesting any purported climate benefit of switching American energy sources from coal to gas is nullified because of the high rate of leakage. Methane is 80% more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. She wrote, “EDF's report underestimates the full volume of methane leakage throughout the entire fracking process.” She went on to say no amount of methane leakage is good for the planet and the other inherent hazards of gas fracking including water contamination, air pollution and serious human health effects far outweigh the investment in fossil fuels. She stated that every dollar that goes into fracking means fewer dollars invested in wind, solar and other clean energy systems.

A non-profit group is warning oil field workers to protect themselves against fugitive emissions. Sharon Wilson of Dallas is employed with Earthworks and has been documenting leaking oil tank batteries, tank trucks, pipelines, valves, manifold connections in the Permian Basin for over 20 years. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health recorded 10 oil field worker deaths in 2015 where vapors were suspected as the cause. Wilson said, “"The industry is not at all serious about containing dangerous emissions. They don't care about workers." Wilson uses a infrared camera to detect fumes. Hydrogen Sulfide is often an instant killer in high concentrations. Volatile organic compounds including benzene and toluene are carcinogenic. Methane is highly flammable and will explode. It is also an asphyxiant. Canaries die in coal mines when oxygen decreases to 16%.

An outspoken opponent of Dallas-based Energy Transfer's Bayou Bridge pipeline project was beaten recently near the resistance camp called L'eau Est La Vie in the Atchafalaya Swamp of Louisiana. Tricked into thinking she was helping a neighbor in distress, she was pushed down and whipped with leather belts. The assailants are still at large. The camp is allegedly promoting lock downs and tree sitting blocking pipeline workers in the swamp. Energy Transfer expects the pipeline to be in operation by 2020 to carry Canadian tar sands oil to the Mississippi River for refining. The Atchafalaya is larger than the Florida Everglades, yields 22 million pounds of wild crawfish annually and has over 100 species of fish.

Billionaire Jeff Bezo’s spaceship program launched and landed successfully Mission 9 at Corn Ranch just north of Van Horn last Wednesday according to a Blue Origin press release. The cargo included a number of sub-orbital space experiments that were released at 62 miles above sea level. Preparing for manned flights later this year, the crew capsule was pushed to severe limits without failure. Tickets for suborbital space travel are available at the Blue Origin website.

Midland has the 9th most unequal income ratio in the nation. The average top 1 pct Midlander made $1.3 million in 2017 while the average of the 99% made just at $50.000. The Economic Policy Institute reports that income inequality in the US continues to grow. This 45-year trend of the rich getting richer was preceded by a time between 1928 and 1973 when the average American worker’s income was rising faster than the 1%. This era according to EPI was characterized by “a rising minimum wage, low levels of unemployment after the 1930s, widespread collective bargaining, and a cultural, political, and legal environment that kept a lid on executive compensation.” Communism, socialism, strong unions and worker protections were not uncommon in that era. But, according to Dr Richard Wolf, the capitalistic ideology won the propaganda war starting with the McCarthy era’s Red Scare in the 1950’s and continued with the one and a half million lives lost in Viet Nam presumably lost to stop an alleged domino effect of communism. Union – bashing came with Reagan era and the Bushes made sure oil&gas was never mentioned in the same context as climate change. Today it seems we are led by a billionaire who works for himself and other billionaires. There has never been a time in recent history when wealth was so concentrated among the few.

The Case for a Maximum Wage, a new book by Sam Pizzigati suggests new strategies to eliminate a world dominated by policy-making that benefits the super-rich. The book seeks to answer whether a maximum wage could become politically practical and return our corptacracy back to a democracy. The book points out that in the past three presidencies Bush, Obama and Trump, more than 111 billion dollars of tax cuts have been given to the 1% while the average worker’s share of taxes has gone up and their income has stagnated. Texas is home to 46 billionaires, the most of any state who pay the same rate of Taxes as a poor single mother.

According to Inequality.org Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world. He surpassed the 150 billion net worth mark this summer. But at the mighty Amazon not all is well according to UK reporter James Bloodworth who went underground and worked as an Amazon warehouseman in Staffordshire. He reported some workers peed in bottles because they were afraid of losing their jobs for missing their quota. He said the warehouse resembled a prison with monitoring cameras and security forces roaming the halls. A survey by workers rights platform Organize reported 55% of UK Amazon workers had increased feelings of depression since working for Bezo while 74% avoided on-the-job toilet breaks. Amazon warehouse workers went on strike in Spain last week and others are calling for a strike at Staffordshire. Meantime, according to Linked In, Texas workers rank Amazon as one of the best places in the state to work.

The UN report on climate change indicated the poor will suffer the most as the planet gets hotter. Already 300,000 people a year are dying from climate change according to the UN. The document linking social justice and environmental justice said, “People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change.” The biggest killers according to the report are drought, floods and other extreme weather, crop failure, loss of low lying land and islands, and desertification. Meantime the entire state of Texas is presently experiencing temperatures above normal with some parts 6 to 8 degrees warmer than average according to Texas Agri-Life. Most of the panhandle of Texas is either in an extreme or severe drought according to the Palmer Index, while the USGS reports desertification is increasing on the high plains of Texas. Climate Discovery. Org says Padre Island is shrinking while Houston is still in clean up stage from Hurricane Harvey. The Texas cotton crop this year especially dry land farming looks to be the worse since 2011. Texas ranked 39th in poverty in 2017.

Wind and solar energy continue to grow in Texas including sales of electric cars. 12,500 electric cars were sold in 2017 placing the Lone Star state 19th in this category, among states. Texas ranks 1st in wind power generation and 5th in solar. Wind and solar combined were able to power 6.5 million homes in 2017.

First it started with nose bleeds. Now Sue Franklin’s having trouble breathing. The rigs showed up in 2017 and 4 now rumble 24 hours a day less than half a mile from her home in Balmorhea. The fracking frenzy in Reeves County has seen oil &gas permits nearly triple between 2016 and 2017. In March, 12 million barrels of oil equivalent from 9000 wells was pulled from underneath the ground. Sue told the Texas Observer this month, “Some days it’s not that bad. But some days it’s really bad.” Jim, Sue’s husband, said, “Now every morning we get up coughing and hacking… It makes us sick. We’ve both missed days of work because of being sick.” If you’ve experienced health problems that you believe are related to oil&gas activity call Earthworks.

Siting unnecessary economic restrictions, Republicans are leading a charge to modify the Endangered Species Act. The law brought back the Bald Eagle, the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear and other species from the brink of extinction. Should the modifications go the way of Republicans and Big Business, it will likely open up Arctic and Offshore drilling for the oil&gas industry. The series of bills include H.R. 6346, introduced July 20th by Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. The Big Bend region is home to 19 endangered or threatened species.

Despite the Trumpification of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency just can’t help spitting out facts from time to time. Here’s one, according to NOAA, May was the hottest May on record for the United States in the 124 years of record-keeping. 5.2 degrees above average. According to Brian Kahn of Earther Magazine, under Trump “Nearly every agency—but especially environmentally-focused ones—have seen their vision and actions shift dramatically away from enforcing protections and regulations toward overturning them. Science has also often been put by the wayside, particularly climate science.” According to Texas Agri-Life parts of Texas are presently 6to8 degrees warmer than average.

The volatile organic compound known as TCE, also known as perc, which is used in fracking solutions, dry-cleaning, and refrigeration is according to the EPA’s website, “a carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure.” But the agency’s 2017 proposed ban on the chemical, is being put on the back-burner by the Trump Administration according to NPR. Two of Nine municipal water wells in Kermit have been condemned and placed on the Superfund list due to TCE contamination.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline cutting through the Atchafalaya swamp, the nation’s largest, is meeting continued resistance by environmental protectors. The under-construction pipeline is owned by Dallas- based Energy Transfer and is designed to carry oil tar sands from Canada to the Mississippi River for refining. Tree sitters remain in the tops of bald cypress trees along the pipeline route, allegedly slowing construction This week a para-military security company, an affiliate of Tiger Swan, hired by Energy Transfer, cut limbs from the tree sitter trees to make it more dangerous for the sitters to climb.

A compression station operated by Energy Transfer exploded Friday with two known injuries and one missing. The explosion closed Texas Highway 18 between Fort Stockton and Monahans for six hours. Authorities are still trying to determine why the 30,000-horsepower unit exploded. The pipeline connecter carried methane gas.

AUGUST

“We’re on the doorstep of a world without coral reefs,” says Inger Anderson of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Coral bleaching is happening at an unprecedented rate. The 1400 mile long Great Barrier Reef of Australia now has a 900 mile zone of pure white coral. Nearly dead. In the Florida Keyes high water temperatures experienced in 2014 and 2015 has left less than 10 per cent of living coral covering the reef. And in the Gulf of Mexico, 80 miles due south of Galveston, the deep water coral of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary is also bleaching due to high water temperatures according to Science Magazine. The bleaching according to the article is from burning fossil fuels, livestock farming and other things that emit CO2 into the atmosphere, feeding the greenhouse effect and creating hotter temperatures. This year a group of scientists and stakeholders requested the Trump Administration expand the Flower Garden Banks from 56 square miles to 206. If approved the quadrupling of the sanctuary would provide the coral protection from anchoring, over fishing and oil drilling – but safety from a warming planet remains unsolved. Texas Parks & Wildlife will consider banning the commercial collection of four fresh water species of turtles on private property at their August 23 board meeting in Austin. The four species include common snapping turtles, smooth softshell, spiny softshell and the most common in the Big Bend, the red-eared slider. In 2007 a regulation to ban the collection of these species on state lands was approved but this represented only 2.3% of the total turtle habitat. Current rates of collection for these species has been called “unsustainable” by TPW.

Air pollution in San Antonio finally got the red flag from the EPA. The city, dancing on the fence of non-compliance for twenty years, slipped into federal air quality non-attainment status this month joining other smoggy Texas cities. Nobody knows what this means in the Trump era but previously federal restrictions on cities included limits on new highway construction, factory expansions and emission tests for cars. Some say this economic budget will hurt San Antonio but Heywood Sanders a UT Professor told the San Antonio Current, “Has economic development or population growth in Dallas or Houston been brought to a screeching halt because of their non-attainment status? And the answer to that, of course, is no.” Public health is the bigger issue. A 12-year study of 911 calls in Houston showed that a 20 part per billion increase in ozone over a 3-day period was followed by a 5% increase in asthma attacks and a 4% increase in heart attacks. Such attacks mean a drop in productivity and the EPA has estimated a $2 trillion economic benefit by 2020 compared to the $65 billion government and business would pay in compliance costs mandated by the Clean Air Act. Since most of the ozone is caused by transportation, San Antonio officials are looking at metro rail expansion and design pathways to create a denser city thereby reducing commutes.

The Bentson – Rio Grande State Park may soon be another victim of the Border Wall. The Park on the Rio Grande near Mission Texas will be split according to TPW ED Carter Smith who told the Texas Observer this week that “the headquarters and visitors center would be north of the border wall and the entire remainder of the park that the public uses would be on the south side of the wall.” More than 2500 scientists found that the environmental impact of the wall would be a disaster for wildlife and have endorsed a petition to request the Department of Homeland Security to re-think their plans. Should the park be closed, the land will likely be returned to the donor family.

A leaking methane gas pipeline in Midland County exploded Wednesday killing one man and sending 6 more to the hospital. The pipeline according to the Texas Railroad Commission is owned by El Paso Natural Gas and operated by Kinder Morgan. This is the Permian’s second methane gas related death in as many weeks.

This summer’s Gulf of Mexico “dead Zone” an area of low oxygen that kills marine life, is only the size of Delaware, according to NOAA scientists cruising the Louisiana coast. This area is smaller compared to years past and may not stretch to the Texas Coast. West winds and a new fertilizer scheme implemented by many Mississippi River Valley farmers may be part of the shrinkage equation. A Federal program called Runoff Risk is designed to help farmers apply fertilizer at optimum times to ensure it stays on the fields and nutrient runoff through the Mississippi River watershed is limited. Hypoxia, the scientific name for the dead zone phenomena, is initiated by fertilizer run-off that then stimulates massive algae growth, that eventually dies, sinks decomposes and, in the process, uses up the oxygen needed to support marine life.

Meat is one of the most environmentally polluting products in the world according to Austin-based Texas Environment. Their press release stated, “Runoff pollution from industrial farms that produce animal feed is the main source of water contamination in the country, and causes a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico each summer.” And according to “Flunking the Planet” 95% of the nation’s largest meat retailers are getting “F’s” for failing to hold meat producers responsible for feed sourcing, manure processing, and greenhouse gas emissions management. Lucia von Reusner of Mighty Earth said, “No one wants to eat meat that’s causing massive water pollution, dead zones, or climate change. This report shows that there’s dire need for leadership from food companies in holding their meat suppliers to higher standards.” Those receiving F’s included, Starbucks, Trader Joes and Walmart and the Jeff Bezos owned chain, Whole Foods.

Crude oil production is at an all-time high in Texas while employment in the industry is lagging. According to Oil&Gas Daily, “The number of rigs deployed across the state is increasing, as are payrolls, though employment is below the peak rates from four years ago.” Texas produced 4.3 million barrels of oil a day in June, an all-time monthly record. Meantime the New York Magazine, edited by Texan Jake Silverstein, devoted this week’s entire issue on how we lost the planet. Its an agonizing read, but I think sobering, if you’re still in doubt. The promo reads; Thirty Years ago we could have saved the planet. The science of climate change was settled. Republicans and Democrats agreed. The World was Ready. Yet we could not bring ourselves to act. Why?

Last week we reported that the oil&gas compression station that exploded near Monihans killing one man and injuring two was owned by Energy Transfer. The TRC informed me this week that Targa Resources owns it, a fortune 500 company based in Houston, who’s $5million a year CEO is Joe Bob Perkins. Give him a call at 713 584 1000 and make sure he’s addressing safety and maintenance at Targa compression stations.

Flummoxed Petro-chemical leaders are shaking their heads this week over a Harris County grand jury’s indictment of the CEO and manager of Arkema Inc. The company’s stored toxic chemicals exploded during Hurricane Harvey. The indictment includes charges for reckless release of the toxins. Alexander Forrest, chief of the district attorney’s environmental crimes division told the Houston Chronicle, “As the hurricane approached, Arkema was more concerned about production and profit than people.” Arkema rebuffed the charges calling the indictment “astonishing.” The BP Texas City explosion that killed 15 men in 2005 was the last time a corporate officer was criminally charged in Texas.

Swiss based Trafigura Commodities is planning to build an offshore oil-exporting facility south of Galveston to accommodate 500,000 ton tankers. The 2015 lifting of the ban on US crude oil exports opened world-wide markets for Texas crude which likely will break production records in 2018. Enterprise Products Partners of Houston said it plans to build an even larger offshore oil exporting terminal in the same area of the Gulf. Meantime the Port of Corpus Christi is widening and deepening their ship channel and have convinced TxDot to build a higher bridge over the channel to allow larger ships and solidify their NO.1 crude oil export status among US ports.

The Odessa District is averaging about 900 car crashes a month in 2018 according to TxDot. Last year144 car crash fatalities were recorded in the district. TxDot will spend 180 million in road improvements for the Odessa District between 2016 and 2019.

Dallas billionaire Kelsy Warren will dish out some chump change to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Monday the state agency fined Warren’s Sunoco company $148,000 for construction violations that negatively impacted private water wells in three counties. Meantime the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has removed almost all restrictions for the billionaire’s Mariner East Pipeline. Last week, retired school teacher Ellen Gerhard, was sentenced to 2 to 6 months in Pennsylvania State prison for indirect criminal charges stemming from her protest of the Mariner East Pipeline cutting through her family’s 40 ac farm.

The EPA is being sued for failing to classify El Paso as a city with unhealthy air. The Chamizal Families of El Paso, the Sierra Club and Sunland Park, a suburb of El Paso, claim the city must be forced to find ways to reduce emissions. Hilda Villegas, a member of Familias Unidas de Chamizal told KVIA, “According to the Clean Air Act, the EPA is obligated to designate a city as being a non-attainment area if that city is a major contributor to an area that is classified as a non-attainment area. Sunland Park has been identified as being a non-attainment area. Why then is the EPA neglecting its obligation set out by the Clean Air Act?” The City of San Antonio recently joined Dallas and Houston as Texas cities of non-attainment and will be required to reduce emissions. El Paso’s sister city, Juarez, across the Rio Grande, remains a wild card in the air pollution equation.

According to some Permian industry observers five factors are limiting an outright economic oil&gas Big Bang. Although production may set a record this year, pipeline take-away, labor shortages, water shortages, accidents and producing more gas than oil, have Wall Street investors concerned. Moreover large debts in the industry, some saying upwards of 280 billion that is still being paid off, haunts the fracking industry. Meantime, environmental concerns such as the deep toxic disposal wells, leaking wells, run-away wells, venting, flaring, fracking, aquifer contamination, water shortages and air pollution continue.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is seeking public in put on how to use the 209 million dollar settlement won from Volkswagon. The state sued VW after the German automaker revealed they had programmed their diesel cars to cheat on emission tests. 32,000 non-compliant units were sold in the Lone Star State. The TECQ is suggesting the money should be used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from car and truck tail pipes – nitrous oxide triggers low-level ozone formation which in turn creates smog. But according to a statement from Adrian Shelly of Public Citizen, some of the funds should be used to reduce nitrogen oxides from tugboats, ships, trains and other big-engined industrial transport units, which according to Shelly, “are among the most cost-effective projects available in terms of their ability to reduce air pollution and protect public health.” Zero emission electric cars are also be touted as part of the plan with the Sierra Club suggesting millions should be invested in re- charge stations across the state. Meantime the largest maker of electric cars, Tesla, has been penalized by the state because of their direct-manufacturer purchase program which is not friendly to Texas auto dealerships.

According to The Hill Japanese officials announced this week that Mazda, Yahama and Suzuki have admitted to using falsified emissions data in vehicle inspections. In a new Politico-Morning poll, 49% of Americans queried said they were against the plan to roll back Obama-era national standards on cars. The Trump Administration announced last month they would seek to dismantle the plan to require automakers to increase fuel efficiency of cars to 53 miles per gallon by 2025. In an earlier move Trump allowed emission-cheating VW diesels built between 2014-2016, to be sold on the market without pollution remedies.

The giant plastic factory in Port Lavaca, Formosa Plastics, is again being called out for its pollution. In2017 the TECQ fined the Taiwan giant for $121,000 for illegal discharges of plastic into the Bay. But San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeepers said the fine imposed was miniscule, did not stop unauthorized discharges, procured no engineering fix, nor remedied collection of the plastic pellets dissolving in the eco-system. Attorney David Frederick told the Waterkeepers Alliance, “We believe actors of this size need to be disciplined on a scale that they are not likely to ignore.” SABEW currently has a case pending in federal court seeking 49 million dollars in environmental damages.

The pipeline worker killed last week in a Midland County methane explosion was 63-year-old Bud Taylor of San Angelo. Five others were airlifted to a Lubbock hospital where one remains in critical condition and two others in serious condition. Taylor attended Crane High School in Crane, and leaves behind his wife, Rita Seymour Taylor. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has filed no violations against the owner of the pipeline El Paso Natural Gas nor the operator Kinder Morgan. The cause of the explosion is still be investigated. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016 Census of Fatal Occupational injuries the oil&gas industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the country with 10.6 fatalities per 100,000 fulltime workers per year compared to 3.6 deaths all industries nationwide.

Alpine, the gateway city to the Big Bend, but more recently known as the tail end of the oil patch, registered a 70 in ozone readings last Saturday, one point below an unhealthy status according to the Clean Air Act.

AUGUST

Governor Greg Abbotts decision to suspend environmental reporting by the TECQ for months after Harvey has some people asking why. The Environmental Integrity Project questioned whether his decision “encouraged companies to downgrade or eliminate their pollution reporting after the fact.” EIP added in their statement, “Such activity undermines public trust in our regulatory systems and may mask real health risks posed by air pollution releases during storms. “During Harvey industry reported releasing 8.3 million tons of various toxins in to the air. Months later the quantity was reduced by 23%. The Houston Chronicle said, “The changing estimates underscore questions about just how much air and water pollution was truly released in the aftermath of Harvey — and how much of it could or should have been avoided by better planning, maintenance and procedures.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline, designed to carry oil tar sands from Canada to Texas for refining, received a blow from US District Court Judge Brian Morris who ruled in favor of the Indigenous Environmental Network. The ruling requires a new Environmental Impact Statement to reflect Nebraska’s rejection of Trans Canada’s preferred routing through the corn-husker state. The pipeline, proposed originally in 2008, will likely be delayed even more.

Two water protectors were jailed last week at the Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction site in the Atchafalaya Swamp near Lafayette Louisiana. According to reports received by West Texas Wind, private security forced two female water protectors from common ground state park property, into a boat then transported them by boat in handcuffs and released them into the path of the pipeline. The St James Parish Sheriff deputies arrested them at that point and took the duo to jail. Felony trespassing charges have been filed.

Despite the Big Brown Coal Plant shut down in Texas earlier this year, Peabody Coal Co registered a 110- million-dollar profit in the 2nd quarter. Peabody supplied Powder River Basin coal to Big Brown and two other Texas plants before their closure, primarily due to cheap methane gas. Peabody, who is a year out of bankruptcy, generated most of its profit from their Australia mines who supply export coal to India and China. Peabody also announced they were considering re-opening a open pit coal mine at Black Mesa Arizona despite poor overall domestic demand and and environmental concerns by the Navajo people.

A securities fraud case brought against Dallas based- Exxon Mobil has taken a step forward for the class action plaintiffs. A Texas federal judge denied the world’s second largest corporation to throw out the case. Plaintiffs, led by the Greater Pennsylvania Carpenters Pension Fund are claiming that the oil giant’s knowledge of climate change over 30 years ago constitutes investor fraud.

Frack wells are getting deeper and longer and so is the water consumption. A new report by Duke University, titled The Intensification of the Water Footprint of Hydraulic Fracturing, shows water used per well drilled in the Permian Basin increased 767% between 2011 and 2016. Three day fracks of 12,000,000 gallons of water each are not uncommon. Exxon reported on this program they are now experimenting with 3-mile-long horizontal drilling in the Permian. Meantime as water shortages begin to arise in the Permian oil fields, Texas General Land Office chief George P Bush plans to sell state owned water in Culberson and Reeves counties to the oil industry. Ground water districts in both counties have so far taken no action to prevent aquifer depletion by the Bush plan.

Fracking robots are now being experimented with to accelerate oil and gas production in the Permian Basin. The robots according to Bloomberg News will allow “push button fracking” in the near future. Houston-based Haliburton’s Prodigi AB services is leading the charge using computers to precisely floorboard pumps to inject water, sand, biocides, lubricants, solvents, anti-corrosives, acids and other dangerous chemicals into the earth for greater fossil fuel production.

Private equity firms plan to invest billions over the next decade in one of the Permian Basin’s biggest problems; waste water. According to MSN about 660 million gallons of waste water are produced in the Permian Basin oil fields every day. Most of it is trucked away and then injected into one of the 217,000 disposal wells in Texas. But upstart corporations like Water Bridge Resources plans to build waste water pipelines to save money on transport and find the cheapest areas to dump the waste into wells. Studies, according to MSN, have linked disposal wells to earthquakes as wastewater from fracking and production can put stress on underground faults and increase seismic activity. Some have long term plans to recycle the waste water but in 2017 it is projected that less than 1% of Permian oil&gas wastewater has been recycled.

Alcoa is selling their old coal mines in Elgin for 250 million dollars according to the Austin Statesman. The low BTU lignite vein spread over 32,000 acres in Central Texas produced millions of tons of coal for nearly eighty years until the plant was shuttered earlier this year. The TRC approved the reclamation process this week, which included removing old toilet facilities and condom machines. The Pittsburg based giant hopes to sell the land to developers or anybody really, who likes mercury. Travis Brown, a local resident told the Statesman, “Nothing has been built on it because subsidence is a problem – the land is constantly moving around. There’s a concern they buried coal ash over decades in the mine pits which could be toxic, that could cause groundwater contamination. The lakes are also abandoned mine pits. God knows what’s been buried there. Anybody who buys it will deal with some contaminated areas out there.” Along with mercury, coal ash contains cadmium and arsenic. According to a 2006 TECQ study, coal-fired plants are the leading single cause of mercury contaminated fish. Moreover, there are 24 central Texas fishing lakes that presently post mercury contamination warnings.

Indigenous led L’eau Est La Vie Camp near Energy Transfer’s Bayou Bridge pipeline construction zone in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana was raided last week, two weeks after the legislature approved a new state law directing law enforcement to arrest pipeline protesters. According to The Intercept, the new law was written by the American Legislative Exchange Council a legal aid that produces wording for pro oil&gas lawmakers. Similar legislation was adopted by North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests against the same pipeline company, Dallas-based ETP. Seven face the new-fangled felony charges. According to L’eau press releases, the camp is located on private property with the express approval of the land owner.

Tax payers are being asked via their political representatives to dish out 12 billion dollars to protect the Texas Petrochemical industry along the coast from climate change. An offshore storm surge levy, laden with rip rap and concrete designed to put back increasingly strong storms is on the blocks at the federal level. Steve Sherrill, Army Corp of Engineers resident engineer at Port Arthur told the AP “You are looking at a lot of people, a lot of homes, but really a lot of industry.” The usual critics of federal spending, Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both are gung-ho on the tax-payer funded gulf rampart. Charles Pierce at Esquire commented yesterday, “Yes, the fact that these companies are asking the taxpayers of the world they are ruining, to pay for protecting them against the consequences of the world they are ruining.”

SEPTEMBER

On Labor Day about 50 water protectors stopped work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline construction project that cuts through the Atchafalaya swamp of Louisiana. The following day, however, police in military garb with K-9 dogs attacked the protesters sending 4 to jail with felony protest charges. With three St Martin Parish deputies attempting to hand cuff her, Sheri Foitland, Chief of the L’eau est La Vie resistance camp recruited, shouting, “We need you here now, we need you now!” The pipeline, owned by Dallas billionaire Kelsy Warren of Energy Transfer, is designed to carry North Dakota crude to the Mississippi River. The information officer for the camp said the pipeline was crossing land without the consent of the land owners.

The risk for protesting oil&gas expansion in Louisiana got a lot meaner on August 1st .Louisiana Republicans and many Democrats drafted verbatim legislation written by a private coalition called American Legislation Exchange Council. The new bill felonizes protests in so-called “critical infrastructure areas.” ALEC’s other works includes producing model bills for reducing corporate taxation, loosening environmental controls, tightening voter identification rules, weakening labor unions and opposing gun control. Blumberg Business Week said the group gave corporations “outsized influence.” Dallas billionaire Kelsy Warren is one of their biggest donors. ALEC is lead by ultra-conservative Indiana State Senator Jim Buck, who endorsed The Koch Brothers sponsored Kansas tax reduction bill that has nearly bankrupted the state. Some protesters of the L’Eau Est La Vie resistance camp may be the first to test the law’s might, if the local district attorney chooses to bring the charges forward. Loyola New Orleans law professor Bill Quigley said, “Their prosecution may well be the test case to see if that law is constitutional or not.” A version of the ALEC law have been introduced in 8 other states. Texas passed their own version of a felony protest law in 2014.

Environmentalists and friends of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the nation’s largest, won a legal victory Monday in Louisiana against Dallas-based Energy Transfer. The pipeline company had dredged, cut trees and laid pipe through a parcel of land that had not yet been condemned by eminent domain. The landowner had given pipeline protesters express permission to guard the land from pipeliners. St Martin Parish Sheriff’s office had arrested 8 protesters in the past several weeks on the land citing the newly drafted no protesting on critical infrastructure law, written by a conservative think tank from Indiana. This week’s court hearing persuaded Energy Transfer to stop all construction on the land until the court can hear the case brought by a conservation group on behalf of the land owner, Peter Aaslestad and family. The case alleges that Energy Transfer was constructing the pipeline illegally on their land. The case is on the docket for November 27 th in New Orleans. The attorney on behalf of the family, Misha Mitchell stated “Everyone should be concerned that certain people get away with things that others can’t. It’s not an equitable system, and there should be serious spotlight on accountability and compliance with the laws of this state.” Energy Transfer began cutting trees on Aaslestad’s property in late July. According to Truth Out, new demand for fossil fuel infrastructure has oil companies like Energy Transfer seizing land by way of eminent domain which trigger expropriation powers all under the banner of public benefit when in fact the infrastructure is for profit. While many who challenge the use of eminent domain lose in court as did 7 ranchers in the Big Bend who lost against Energy Transfer’s Trans Pecos Pipeline, some of those challengers have been sent to prison. A Pennsylvania grandmother and retired school teacher Ellen Gerhardt is serving 5 months in a Pennsylvania state prison for allegedly baiting a bear to come on her property to stop another Kelsy Warren owned pipeline.

Benchmarks for determining whether land is contaminated or not is far laxer in Texas than neighboring states. According to the Texas Campaign for the Environment, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma have tighter restrictions on re-development of industrial land. According to the Texas Tribune, Texas allows up to 69 milligrams of benzene per kilo of soil for residential redevelopment, while Louisiana allows only 3.1 milligrams for the same carcinogen and that’s for industrial re-development. The report also shows that 93% of clean-up sites in Texas are under state management while only 7% are under federal. Texas allows 14 times greater concentrations of soil contaminants and 35 times greater concentrations of air pollution compared to federal regulations.

George P Bush, Texas General Land Office chief, continues to allow state ground water in Culberson and Reeves counties to be pumped and sold to fracking operators. The government to private sector arrangement is without precedent and is framed inside a complicated joint venture with California based water developer, Lane Christenson Company. The water, allegedly falls within the lax Texas standards of what is considered non-potable. Texas has the lowest total dissolved solids ranking for non- potable water in the country, thereby voiding regulation of huge quantities of groundwater and making it available for fracking. Meantime the Bush family over the past 12 years has acquired land that sits atop some of the world’s largest groundwater aquifers including over 300,000 acres in the Guarani Aquifer, under Paraguay acquired in 2006.

Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline is a felon. In a court ruling last week, the corporation was found guilty of failing to prevent a pipeline spill through negligent maintenance and then not reporting the spill immediately. The spill, the largest on a California Coast in 25 years killed marine life and birds at the Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara. The corporation joins other corporate felons including British Petroleum, British Airways, General Electric and Volkswagon. No company executives at Plains will face prison. CEO Greg Armstrong will retire at the end of this month. The corporation will be sentenced in November.

The Salt Marsh Plan, a 95 million dollar undertaking primarily financed by our state government to restore the marsh of South East Texas has noted some gains in the fight to keep oil&gas contaminants and saltwater at bay – but those recent gains are now being challenged by a group that wants to export processed methane from the Sabine River. According to reports received by West Texas Wind, the Texas Parks & Wildlife is discussing trading 120 acres of the WD Murphrey Wildlife Management Area to a petro-chemical entity who seeks to build an export terminal on the presently protected marsh land along the banks of the Sabine River. The Salt Marsh that runs from Vermillion Bay in Louisiana to Galveston Bay has been losing land to the sea as development of the world’s largest petro-chemical complex expanded. Now with stronger and slower storms and a marsh that has been cut, ripped and dredged in just about every conceivable direction, the notion that a healthy marsh protects industry can’t seem to find a consistent priority in minds of the oil&gas industry. Moreover, processed methane or LNG, requires a tremendous amount of energy to cool methane to 166 degrees below zero inorder for it to liquify and therefore be economically transported by ships. Some have suggested that if the true cost of fossil fuel was recognized, ie saltwater intrusion, loss of land, flooding and pollution, the project would never be considered.

A blowdown on the Trans Pecos Pipeline at the Rio Grande sent over 1000 tons of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere last week. The chemicals included raw methane, toluene, and benzene. The TCEQ reported the discharge was a routine maintenance event and legal. It is the second time in 7 months where over a thousand tons of volatile organic compounds were released by the Trans Pecos Pipeline operated by Energy Transfer, owned by Dallas billionaire Kelsy Warren. To date no tax revenue has been collected by Presidio or Brewster counties from the alleged public utility.

A study by the Colorado School of Public Health earlier this year concluded that living near oil&gas wells will decrease your life expectancy. The study determined that people who live within 500 feet of oil&gas wells breathe cancer-causing agents such as benzene and have a lifetime excess cancer risk 8 times higher than the upper limit set by the EPA. 500 Feet is the minimum distance a well can operate from residential areas in Colorado. In Texas the minimum distance is 100 feet. Although this distance was challenged by the City of Denton, the state government, led by Governor Greg Abbott, struck down the city’s attempt to file an ordinance against oil&gas operations within city limits.

The University of Texas is the largest oil&gas lease holder in the state and much of its revenue comes from oil&gas royalties, making it the most endowed university in the country. And despite indications that climate change, pollution, public health, and a state government that appears to be merely a front for the oil&gas industry, the UT leadership, allegedly educating the future of America, has not divested itself from the industry. Meantime, California’s public university system, with 238,000 students announced earlier this month that they will run completely on electricity from clean, renewable energy by 2025.

The world’s fifth largest economy, California, announced that they will commit to generating 100% of their electrical needs from renewable and zero-carbon sources such as solar and wind by 2045. Governor Brown signed the bill on September 12th. Environment Texas released this statement from national chairman, Doug Phelps, “This action by the world’s fifth-largest economy reaches well beyond state borders. Given the pending U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, sub-national action is crucial. And on the eve of the Global Climate Summit, California is lighting a path for decision makers from around the world. Every day, we see clear signs of a changed planet -- from wildfires scorching the West, to record-high temperatures in the East, to rapidly changing oceans. We have the power to create the future that our children deserve -- but only if we replace fossil fuels with clean energy by the middle of this century. California and Governor Brown are responding to the crisis and opportunity of our time. The rest of the world needs to step up and do the same.”

The cause of a methane gas pipeline explosion in Midland last month that killed a 3-year-old girl and sent three others to the hospital is allegedly a dime size hole that has been leaking for an indeterminate amount of time according to the Midland Reporter-Telegraph. The gas in the pipeline, operated by Targa Resources, was not treated with mercaptan rendering the leak odorless. Delaney Tercero, 3, died two days after the explosion. Her two-year-old sister remains in critical condition. The parents, who were badly burned have been released. The 10-inch diameter pipeline ran 20 feet from the family’s residence. No charges have been filed against Targa. It was the second fatal methane gas pipeline explosion in the Midland area during August. 63-year-old Bud Taylor died at a Compression Station on August 3 rd along Highway 18. The facility was jointly operated by Navitas and Kinder Morgan Corporation.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry, now Energy Secretary, is pushing hard to get a dumping permit approved for a West Texas facility that wants the worst of the worst radioactive nuclear waste. Waste Control Specialists, formerly owned by deceased Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, and Perry campaign contributor pal, opened a 14,000 acre dump in Andrews County in 2012 for low-level radioactive waste. Now the company has formed a joint venture with French conglomerate ORANO called Interim Storage Partners. ISP is in the process of getting a federal permit to dump the nation’s most dangerous waste into the Andrews pit. Over 5000tons of high-level nuclear waste from nuclear power plants across the country will likely be shipped to the Andrews facility should the permit go through. A Say No to Nuclear Waste brigade is touring Texas to spur the defeat of the project. The group was in El Paso yesterday, and will be in Midland today and Andrews Sunday. A second group, Keep Texas From Radioactive Waste, started a second tour in Houston last Tuesday. A consortium of 36 Permian oil&gas companies oppose the nuclear waste dump.

Gulf Coast Ammonia wants to dump 2.2 trillion gallons of industrial wastewater annually into Galveston Bay, one of the most polluted bays in America. The TCEQ is considering their permit request while Texas City officials are offering the plant, which will employ 25-50 full time employees, a ten-year tax abatement. Anhydrous ammonia, extremely toxic to aquatic life is used most often in the preparation of non-organic fertilizers. Shrimper Roy Lee Cannon told the Houston Chronicle, “I don’t see how they can say nothing’s going to be affected or there will be little effect on the environmental situation for the oysters, fish, shrimp etc because they have no way of knowing.” Buoyed by the Trump Administration’s pro fossil fuel stance, the build out of the Texas Gulf Coast petro-chemical industry is seeing its biggest expansion ever.

As the Permian fracking boom gets closer to the Big Bend so too the night lights. We should not feel alone. Today over 80% of all humans and more than 99% of people in the US and Europe live under light polluted skies according to the Scientist magazine. Kevin Gaston, a UK scientist told the magazine, “It’s become clear that light pollution is a major anthropogenic pressure on the environment.” Its effect on humans and other species is still being studied. Theresa Jones of the University of Melbourne said, “We have nothing in our genetic make-up that has been exposed to this type of challenge. It’s completely unprecedented in the history of the Earth.” Most humans and animals evolved with night and day perception, creating the circadian rhythms. Some fear this loss or modification of perception may link us to catastrophe. Franz Holker, a German scientist who was part of a study that reported a loss of nearly 75% of flying insects in parts of Germany over 30 years, warned that such declines have set the Earth on course for an “ecological Armageddon.” “When this study came out, they were thinking about land-use change, climate change, and pesticides,” Hölker said. “But these factors alone could not explain the population plunge. Light pollution might be the missing piece of the puzzle.” Holker’s team recently discovered that the regions of decimated insects also had high levels of night time illumination.

The EPA has rated Texas as the No.1 polluter in the country, siting the large scale petro-chemical industry along the Gulf Coast, fracking and a lax regulatory environment as the spawning ground for the state’s colossal anthropological footprint. But natural causes of pollutants, including the greenhouse gas CO2 in high latitude areas may soon give man-made sources, a run for their money. As temperatures increase, tundra in Alaska is off-gassing. A recent study, led by Harvard University, found that long-term records at Barrow, AK, suggest that CO2 emission rates from North Slope tundra have increased during the October through December period by 73% ± 11% since 1975, and are correlated with rising summer temperatures. Together, the report reads “these results imply increasing early winter respiration and net annual emission of CO2 in Alaska, in response to climate warming.”

Vicki Hollub, CEO of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum and Darren Woods, of Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil, joined 11 other CEOs from major oil companies worldwide at the first US meeting of a four-year- old group called Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. One hundred fifty people including high-ranking green group members, asked questions of the CEO panel in what Axios Magazine described as a “rare and surprising candid discussion.” Axios went on to say that “under pressure from investors and lawsuits, oil companies are starting to acknowledge climate change and slowly shift their business models in response.” The member companies including Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron represent a third of the world’s oil&gas production, and pledged last week at the Manhattan meeting, to cut their methane emissions by one fifth. Nigel Topping, CEO of a nonprofit coalition called We Mean Business, noted that the companies were still overwhelmingly investing in finding new oil and gas over cleaner energy resources. But each of the members have ponied up their share of money creating a substantial fund managed by the group for alternative energy investments. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who attended, said, “The first thing they started tackling when they were formed four years ago was methane, and they’ve taken that issue very seriously. We think they are doing good things with the billion-dollar fund. We will keep watching. We will keep encouraging.”

Chair-Lady of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick, never met a flare she didn’t like or so it seems. In fact, the 3-member TRC board has approved 20,000 flaring permits in the past 5 years according to the Wall Street Journal and not one has been denied. Including a drill site known as Ringo 9. Christi Craddick has an interest in Ringo 9 and 174 other wells according to the Austin-Statesman. So does she have a conflict of interest? Should she have recused herself from approving a flaring permit at Ringo 9? Oil, the gold, comes with associated gas including the greenhouse gas methane, carcinogens toluene and benzene, and VOCs hydrogen sulfide, nitrous oxide and others. If a gas pipeline is not available at the drill site the driller asks the TRC for a permit to flare. The problem is the TRC doesn’t distinguish between flaring and venting and flares don’t always work. In light of the overwhelming evidence of climate change and the role these gasses play in human health , perhaps not issuing a flare permit is the responsible thing to do. Set the pipeline in to take away the associated gas before producing oil. Craddick is up for re-election this November.

Prisoners at Karnes County Residential Center, a privately-operated prison for immigrants seeking asylum, are at risk for cancer, brain damage and respiratory problems according to Deceleration News. Twenty-three-hundred active oil&gas wells are spewing tons of toxins in Karnes County and some wells are as close as 100 feet to the facility. Unlike the 15,000 residents of the county, the asylum seekers have no place to escape the fumes. Priscilla Villa, of Earthworks told Deceleration “The prisoners have no choice but to inhale the toxic fumes coming from these sites. Fracking emissions are harmful to human health and especially hazardous to vulnerable populations, which includes all children, newborns and pregnant women at this detention center.”

Sempra LNG also known as Port Arthur LNG is hoping to build an LNG export terminal at a wildlife management area on the Sabine River. Texas Parks & Wildlife are, behind closed doors, considering trading 120 acres of the JD Murphree Wildlife Management Area to the corporation for an undisclosed property elsewhere. Sempra plans to produce 13.5 million tons of liquified methane at the facility. Three compression stations will be required and horsepower sufficient to cool the methane to a negative 265 degrees below zero for liquification of the gas. Texas Parks & Wildlife have yet to provide information on how they plan to manage this piece of the people’s land.

OCTOBER

San Antonio based oil refiner Andeavor, contributed 4.3 million dollars to the opponents of CARBON TAX bill 1631 on the ballot this November in Washington State, according to the San Antonio Express News. The bill seeks to tax carbon polluters, slow climate change and raise 2.3 billion dollars a year for the state to combat rising sea levels and development of renewable energy. Andeavor has a refinery in Washington. Along with Andeavor, campaign contributors against the carbon tax have raised over $20 million dollars and include BP, Philips 66, Marathon Oil, Valero, the Koch Brothers of Kansas and others. Proponents of the bill have raised 6.5 million. Some oil companies including Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil have called for a national carbon tax plan, that if passed, would nullify state rule.

The Frac sand mining boom in the Permian Basin has spurred the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife to once again petition the US Fish and Wildlife to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as an endangered Species. The lizard, first proposed as an endangered species in 1982, and whose limited habitat includes the hollowed-out depressions of sand dunes in the Permian region, has yet to make the list. Many in the Permian Basin oil industry fear that if the lizard’s status moved to the list, profits could be undermined due to the federally imposed ecological requirements to save the species from extinction. Texas Comptroller Glen Hagar, beneficiary of over a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil industry was quick to formulate a new state plan to ostensibly mollify any federal engagement. Heartland.org reported “Hegar has produced a complete overhaul of an eight-year- old effort to balance lizard conservation and oil and gas production, in response to a new effort by environmentalists to have the lizard listed as endangered under the 1973 Endangered Species Act.” R J Smith, a senior fellow at the National Policy for Public Policy Research, a self-described conservative think tank, whose board members include investors in the oil&gas industry, told Heartland, “Environmentalists have a long history of gaming the ESA by seeking the most obscure species to stop development projects.”

Protesters disrupted the annual Energy Transfer Partners shareholders meeting today at a Hilton in Dallas. Holding signs outside the hotel and chanting “Water is Life,” the protesters seemed most irked about the ETP owned Bayou Bridge Pipeline that crosses 700 Louisiana waterways in route to the Mississippi River where North Dakota crude will be exported. Inside the meeting, protesters notified stock holders that ETP had the worst safety record in the industry, with toxic spills occurring every 11 days. The protesters also questioned the complicity of shareholder investment in profitable yet ostensible socially and environmentally bankrupt corporations. Billionaire and Chairman of the Board, Kelsey Warren, reportedly fled the room after a water main burst. Two arrests were made.

The EPA is now considering lowering the definitional standards of clean water under the Clean Water Act according to the Houston Chronicle. Should the water standards be lowered by the Trump Administration, it will enable the oil&gas industry to rid themselves of waste water more conveniently. Lakes, streams, city water treatment centers and soil around production pads could be environmentally challenged should dirtier clean water be allowed for recirculation rather than taken out of the hydrologic cycle forever through deep disposal well injection. As the supply of deep waste disposal wells continues to shrink and new concerns about earthquake pro-genesis, Permian operators are scrambling to find ways to be rid of the 660 million gallons of waste water generated per day in the region. Wastewater pipelines to whoosh waste to cheaper dumping grounds and new filtering processes are some of the potential solutions but none represent as cheap an alternative as dumping lower quality water onto the surface environment.

Settlement funds for the BP Deepwater-Horizon Oil Spill of 2010 are slowly funding coastal restoration projects in Texas. The Texas share, 238 million dollars, has funded in part four big projects to date according to the Houston Chronicle. The cargo ship Kracken was sunk of the coast of Freeport as part of a series of artificial reefs to create habitat for recreational fishing. 10.7 million funded the redevelopment of Galveston Island State Park. Three rookery islands in Galveston and Matagorda Bays are the recipient of $20 million to help protect herons, pelicans and gulls at the Big Bogg National Wildlife Refuge. And another 20 million has been designated for Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle habitat. Although Texas nesting numbers were down for several years after the 3.1-million-barrel oil spill, a record number of nests, 353, were counted in 2017.

Pilgrim’s Pride poultry in Mount Pleasant is the third worst polluting meat packing house in the countryaccording to Environment Texas. A report by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earth Justice, called, “Water Pollution from Slaughter Houses” shows that nearly 75% of the nation’s large meat processing plants have violated their pollution control permits in the last 24 months --with some dumping more nitrogen pollution than small cities. Peter Lehner, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said: “Slaughterhouses are another dirty link in the highly polluting industrial meat production chain. From

polluted runoff from over-fertilized fields growing animal feed, to often-leaking manure lagoons and contaminated runoff at concentrated animal feeding operations, and to industrial slaughterhouses, the way most of our meat is now produced impairs our drinking water and public health. We need to clean up every stage.” The report statistically arranges the slaughterhouse polluters in quantities of released nitrogen --which fuels algae growth and creates low-oxygen dead zones. Pilgrims Pride discharged 1,755 pounds of nitrogen a day, into Lake O’ the Pines last year. Brian Zabcik, a Clean Water Advocate said, “Texans love barbecue — but nobody orders a side of water pollution with their meat.” He added, “The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality needs to issue stronger water pollution control permits for the slaughterhouses in East Texas and elsewhere — and then enforce them, so they stop contaminating our waterways.”

Physicist and author Jan Dash told the Houston Chronicle this week, “The biggest step in reducing global warming requires transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energies.” He went on to say, “It is scientifically certain that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric carbon dioxide, which then produces the global warming trend observed over the last 40 years. While fossil fuels made modern civilization possible, fossil fuels have also led to the distinct possibility that the Earth may become unlivable sooner or later.” Meantime the Army Corp of Engineers predicts a 12-inch sea level rise in Houston by 2038. Dash commented, “Another foot of water at the shoreline means another foot of storm surge in a hurricane. One foot of extra water would be enough to flood New York City subways regularly. The U.S. Navy’s scenarios of sea level rise by 2100 go up to 6 feet. Sea level rise of that magnitude will flood coastal cities and farms, producing mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people worldwide with catastrophic consequences.” Meantime Houston city planning continues to issue building permits in flood zones and will not scratch their no hanging clothes on clothes lines ordinance.

2017 Greenhouse gas emissions rose by 1.6 million tons over 2016 in San Antonio according to the EPA. The top 2 polluters were the city-owned coal fired utilities JK Spruce and the ancient JT Deely Coal Plant. Deceleration News reports that San Antonio will shut down JT Deely by the end of the year. The rest of the list includes three gas-fired utilities, a couple of cement plants, and several landfills. San Antonio’s total carbon footprint for large industrial polluters registered 13.5 million tons in 2017.

Two Texas Scientists, Andrew Dessler and Daniel Cohan released an essay in Gray Matters earlier this month that at one point compares the world’s dumbest criminal with carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is the primarily perpetrator of global warming. The essay read, “it leaves evidence all over the place that it’s guilty. First, the laws of physics tell us that adding carbon dioxide, or any other gas that absorbs infrared radiation, to the atmosphere should warm the planet. Second, we are 100 percent sure humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.” The scientists said that searching for other causes of global warming has turned up no viable suspects. They conclude, “the geologic record is filled with evidence that greenhouse gases impact the climate. For example, during an event about 55 million years ago known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a huge amount of greenhouse gases was released into the atmosphere. At the same time, temperatures spiked. Then, as the greenhouse gases were removed from the atmosphere during the following 100,000 years, temperatures slowly returned to what they were before.” Book’em Dano.

As executive and legislative branches of state and national governments continue to disregard the overwhelming facts of climate change and its causes, the Judicial branch may be the only hope to shape a fossil fuel free future world. Facts are the primary agenda of court cases theoretically and truth is theoretically what the judge seeks. The Atlantic reports this week that climate science may find its sea legs in the stability of the court room. Three avenues of legal procedure are developing. The first according to the Atlantic are civil rights cases. In Oregon, 21 young people are suing the government for failing to restrict fossil fuel companies and therefore violating their “fundamental constitutional rights to freedom from deprivation of life, liberty and property.” The second avenue gaining ground in the courts is called the necessary defense. Once used by anti-abortionists, the tactic highlights a greater good over and above the specifics of a court case and if allowed by the judge, must be considered by the jury. In a case this month in Minnesota, three protesters who turned a valve off and prevented Canadian Tar Sands from entering the USA, were on trial for felony charges valve turning charges. The judge instructed the jury to consider a climate necessity defense, enabling an over-arching principle as the motivation for the alleged crime. It was the second time this year that a judge allowed defendants to argue that climate change was a threat and the government had done nearly nothing to protect the people and therefore the act of turning a valve was the only logical action to take. The third avenue is all about money. Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil has been sued this year at least 5 times for failing to tell the truth about their product’s effect on the planet. The cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and New York have sued for damages caused by bigger storms. The state of New York sued the giant for failing to truthfully communicate their hand in climate change and therefore defraud their shareholders. Should these reparation cases succeed, billion-dollar settlements may not be uncommon.

Sempra LNG continues to meet with Texas Parks & Wildlife behind closed doors regarding a 120-acre parcel of land on the Sabine River within the JD Murphree Wildlife Management Area. Sempra is hoping to secure the land to build an LNG export terminal. This publicly owned tract is part of the largest continuous estuary marsh system in Texas. It is also part of the Salt Bayou Restoration Plan, a 95 million dollar attempt to restore cordgrass, bulrush and the shallow marsh environment that houses diverse aquatic and avian life. At an Army Corp of Engineers public meeting last week in Port Arthur, a member of the public asked, “If you want to restore this marsh, why would you build a liquified methane export terminal in the middle of it?”

The tallest bird in Texas, the Whooping Crane, is making its way from Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park to the coastal marshes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Several were spotted at the refuge last week. Scientists report there are 505 of this endangered species remaining in the world, up from a few dozen thirty years ago. Canadian authorities counted 87 nests this summer but only 24 chicks fledged. Texas Parks & Wildlife are hoping for a better year as recent rains should improve blue crab and the Carolina wolf berry populations, both a favorite whooper food in the coastal marshes.

Three corporations plan to build deep water refrigerated methane export terminals near Port Isabel on the Rio Grande River. All three are vying for FERC and Army Corp of Engineers permits to allow the export of methane aka LNG. Industry intelligence suggests most of the methane will be produced from the Permian and Eagle-Ford shale plays. The Port of Brownsville has already received federal permission to dredge the channel from 40 feet to 52 feet deep allowing ships as big as 100,000 tons deadweight to enter the port. Dredge spoils will be dumped 10 miles offshore. A number of environmental groups are fighting the proposals. A public comment period is now open through the FERC website. Six other Gas export terminals are in the permitting stage in Texas including Houston, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi.

NOVEMBER

Port of Corpus Christi CEO Sean Strawbridge is showing frustration after convincing the people of Corpus Christi to allow him to dredge the ship channel from 42 feet to 54 feet. Trafigura, a swiss commodity trading house, hopes to build an offshore tanker terminal and by-pass the port. Strawbridge said disparagingly, “When you look at these offshore buoys, they are usually in venues that don’t have the same type of quality infrastructure that we have here in the United States. Places like Africa and India.” Strawbridge’s target is oil exports. While Corpus Christi leads the way after the Obama Administration reversed a 40-year ban on exports of US crude, Strawbridge wants a bigger slice of the pie. But 54 feet of water is not enough for today’s very large crude carriers. The proposed off shore terminal will have a draft of 75 feet. Transportation economies of scale is key. Meantime the one-billion-dollar CC-Portland bridge expansion to allow bigger ships to call the port may have some people asking why did we spend the money? The dredge spoils, allegedly clean and uncontaminated from the deepening of the ship channel will create an offshore island 22 miles long, 5 miles wide and 25 feet deep, costing nearly 500 million dollars.

Apache Corporation has upped its producing oil&gas well count in the Apache High to 51 wells, all within 20 miles of Balmorhea State Park. The company plans to drill another 5000 wells in the area over the next ten years.

Climate Specialist, Bruce Melton, of Austin wrote last week in Truthout, that climate change is not a linear phenomenon. In an article titled “California Wildfires: Where is the Climate Change Outrage,” he writes, “…the physics of warming determines that a little more warming doesn’t create a little more extremeness but a lot more.” He used the recent Camp Fire in Paradise, CA where at least 71 people have lost their lives and 12,000 structures were destroyed and the Mendocino Complex Fire in July that burned 459,000 acres as examples of “record-setting increases of these unheard-of extreme weather events.” “What will it take,” he asks “to allow us to treat climate change like it is the most important issue our society has ever faced…?”

The San Antonio Express News released a heat chart of the city last week that shows a 20-degree temperature difference between central city and the northern suburbs. The urban heat island effect map based on a satellite image taken on a recent summer night is part of the final phase of the city’s attempt to draft a climate action and adaption plan. The article reads, “Older residents and working- class families who live in the ‘heat island’ typically can least afford to spend more on summer air- conditioning bills.” Greg Harmon of the Sierra Club told the Express News, “Those people least responsible for our climate crisis are most vulnerable to its impacts.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are hoping to rollback car emissions despite twenty states who say they will sue the feds if they do (Texas is not one of them). MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, points out that the administration’s detailed study calling for the end of vehicle emission regulation is one of the more evil documents produced by the Trump Administration to date. According to Chomsky, the report extrapolates current consumption, and suggests by the end of the century, societal patterns as we know it will be over and since automotive emissions don’t contribute that much to the catastrophe, there isn’t any point trying to limit them.

The pet industry is being blamed for an un-welcomed invasion of an exotic species. According to the Houston Chronicle, the venomous Lion fish with no-known natural enemies on our side of the world, has now arrived in great numbers at the Gulf of Mexico’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, 100 miles off the coast of Galveston. The zebra-striped fish once found the waters of the Indo-Pacific home, but demand by aquarium lovers in the United States established a substantial import trade for the fish and through the cracks and toilets many of these warm-water-loving creatures escaped into the wild. Michelle Johnston, a sanctuary research biologist told the Chronicle, “They are the cockroaches of the sea. They reproduce every four days, and every four days they can release up to 50,000 eggs. Plus, nothing really eats them, they have venomous spines and the native fish are terrified of them.”

A gas pipeline owned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer exploded last week at the Waha gas transfer hub near Coyanosa sending two non-company men to the hospital. It is not known if the men had medical coverage. The 24-inch pipeline ruptured inside a gas processing facility where according to a local resident a series of four explosions occurred the day after Thanksgiving. Energy Transfer spokesperson Vicki Granado said at the time of the incident, the fire would be left alone until it burned itself out, which according to another local resident – it did, two days later. Post explosion security was tight at the scene where charred grounds and metal detritus could be seen. The Texas Railroad Commission will investigate the incident. Environmentalists claim Energy Transfer, who owns over 70,000 miles of pipelines, most of it in Texas, has an accident every 12 days.

Port of Corpus Christi CEO Sean Strawbridge is showing frustration after convincing the people of the Coastal Bend to spend a billion dollars and allow the Port Authority to dredge the ship channel from 42 feet to 54 feet and heighten the Portland Bridge. But, Trafigura, a behemoth Swiss commodity trading house, hopes to build an offshore tanker terminal twenty miles offshore and by-pass the port.Strawbridge told KRIS-TV, “When you look at these offshore buoys, they are usually in venues that don’t have the same type of quality infrastructure that we have here in the United States. Places like Africa and India.” The Port of Corpus Christi is the No.1 USA oil exporting port. But 54 feet of water draft is not enough for today’s very large crude carriers. The Trafigura proposed off shore terminal will have a water draft of 75 feet and no bridges to pass under. Transportation economies of scale is key as some of the largest tankers can carry 500,000 tons of cargo when fully loaded. The billion-dollar project to allow bigger ships to call the port may have some people asking why did we spend the money? Meantime, the dredge spoils, allegedly clean and uncontaminated from the deepening of the refinery-lined ship channel, will create an offshore island 22 miles long, 5 miles wide and 25 feet thick.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton spoke glowingly about record oil production in Texas at last month’s Permian Basin Petroleum Association Annual Meeting in Midland. Sitton said, “Oil and gas production in the Permian has grown exponentially over the last few years, bringing with it unprecedented job growth and revenue for the State of Texas.” The commissioner did not address the growing Permian drug addiction, traffic mortality, teacher shortage, the worst asthma counties of the state nor did he speak to the correlation of fossil fuels and climate change or the $540 hotel rates at Super Eight.

Attorneys for Exxon-Mobil met attorneys from the Sierra Club and Environment Texas this month in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as the oil giant tries to reduce the $20 million fine imposed on their Baytown Refinery earlier this year. Over 16,000 violations were recorded against the refinery over an 8- year span. Luke Metzger, Director of Environment Texas told 740 Radio, “They don’t dispute that there was 16,000 violations, they dispute whether we have the right to sue them over all 16,000. Basically these are equipment fails or an operator makes a mistake, things that are largely preventable by better investment in equipment, better training or more personnel.” Exxon argues the violations, in the form of air and water pollution, are too severe and only worth $1.6 million in fines. In the 3rd quarter of 2018 Exxon-Mobile generated 6.8 billion dollars of profit.

Fracking in the Permian Basin is down according to Bloomberg News. The number of fracking crews peaked in May with 190 roaming the 80,000 square miles of the most prolific oil field in the country. The December 1 st count was 167 crews. Schlumberger, the biggest oil field service provider in the world, is reporting a 15% drop in sales for the last quarter in 2018. A triplet of factors is associated with the downturn including a drop in crude prices, over-extended exploration budgets and a shortage of pipeline takeaway. Perhaps the realization of climate change and the competitiveness of clean energy is part of it too. The average Permian well is fracked 6 to 7 times and uses about 250,000 barrels of fresh water each time along with a number of fracking fluids including acids, radioactive tracking isotopes, emulsifiers, diesel, biocides, propylene glycol, lubricants, anti-corrosives and other toxic chemicals.

Texas utility provider Excel plans to be fossil fuel free by 2050. But is that timely enough? According toDallas News, Xcel, based in Minneapolis, with over a quarter million customers in TX, would have to shut down or sell its entire Texas generating portfolio which includes two coal plants, two methane plants and a combination fuel oil -methane plant. Other utilities have already shuddered three coal plants this year in Texas.

Former Oilman and President George H W Bush was buried in Houston this week. During the 1988 presidential campaign he famously said, “Read my lips no new taxes.” Which he went on to do. He also said, not so famously, “I will use the White House effect to control the Green House effect.” Which He did not do. Nor did any of those who followed him, frankly. Bill McKibben of 350.org wrote last week in the New Yorker,” What has defied expectations is the slowness of the response. The climatologist James Hansen testified before Congress about the dangers of human-caused climate change thirty years ago. Since then, carbon emissions have increased with each year except 2009 and the newest data show that 2018 will set another record. Simple inertia and the human tendency to prioritize short-term gains have played a role, but the fossil-fuel industry’s contribution has been by far the most damaging. Alex Steffen, an environmental writer, coined the term “predatory delay” to describe “the blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable, unjust systems in the meantime.” The behavior of the oil companies, which have pulled off perhaps the most consequential deception in mankind’s history, is a prime example.”

Plastic factories presently are seen as a petro-chemical growth area for the fossil fuel industry but could they be wrong? The European Union voted this week 571 to 53 to ban single-use plastics such as straws, plates, and cutlery by 2021. In India many hotels refuse to provide bottled water and parks throughout Australia post signs reading “No Polyethylene allowed.” England and China also have restrictions on single use plastic. The World Economic Forum states that there is 50 million tons of plastic in the world’s oceans that could take hundreds of years to degrade. The forum warned that there would be more plastic than fish in weight in oceans by 2050. Meantime Exxon-Mobil continues to push through the permitting process to build the largest plastics factory in the world at the Port of Corpus Christi.

Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil agreed to buy 500 megawatts of wind and solar power to power its Permian Basin fossil fuel production operations. Carolyn Fortuna writes in CleanTechnic, “Hallelujah! But, wait. Should we cheer?” Meantime Exxon has pledged to triple their methane production in the Permian by 2025. Fortuna continues, “Does bringing in renewable energy in the Permian Basin — … — even start to make amends for ExxonMobil’s incredible, lasting, and shattering impacts on the planet of fossil fuel drilling and burning? ... Don’t we need to get fossil fuels out of our buildings in order to slash US fossil fuel use by 80% by 2050? …How does ExxonMobil’s expansive drilling in the Permian Basin achieve those goals, even with a nod to wind and solar?” The Carbon Majors Report, prepared by Climate Accountability Institute last year, found 25 corporations led by Exxon-Mobile were responsible for 1/2 of all carbon emissions since 1988. In 1977, James Black, an Exxon senior scientist, addressed the company’s top leaders, writing, “There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon-dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” That’s a pretty clear statement from over 40 years ago. Dear Exxon, the epoch is over, did you not get the memo?

Storm surge barriers may be the Texas solution to monster hurricanes according to a report called “Eye of the Storm,” commissioned by Gov Greg Abbott’s Commission to Rebuild Texas. Under the appointed supervision of pro oil&gas Democrat, Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp, the report failed to make mention of global warming or climate change in its entire 175-page length.

An export terminal for fracked methane at the mouth of the Rio Grande is one step closer to reality. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week decided not to hold a special hearing for Houston-based Next Decade’s project. According to the Houston Chronicle, a coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, shrimpers, neighboring cities and concerned residents had asked the commission to hold a contested case hearing to discuss health, safety and property concerns. The decision not to honor the request took the TCEQ board less than four minutes. The fast-tracking did not sit well with environmentalists. Rebekah Hinojosa with Save RGV from LNG said. “This is yet another example of the TCEQ rubber-stamping air permits for the fossil fuel industry, but it’s not a done deal.” Law suits are pending challenging the export terminal’s environmental and social impacts in the area.

The State of New York’s lawsuit against Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil for a “long-standing fraudulent scheme” remains without a docket nearly two months after the suit was filed by Attorney General Barbara Underwood. The suit alleges that ExxonMobil deceived its investors by hiding its financial exposure to laws aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Exxon-Mobil said the case was tainted, and merit-less. Bill McKibben wrote last month in the New Yorker, “It’s by no means clear whether Exxon’s deception and obfuscation are illegal. The company has long maintained that it ‘has tracked the scientific consensus on climate change, and its research on the issue has been published in publicly available peer-reviewed journals.’ The First Amendment preserves one’s right to lie, although… lying to investors, is a crime.”

In a series of pro-fossil fuel amendments including methane leakage rollbacks, a re-defining of “clean” when it comes to air and water, and revising the Endangered Species Act, the Trump Administration is now rolling back greenhouse gas emission restrictions for new coal plants. Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said an Obama-era requirement that requires new coal plants adopt carbon capture technology would be nullified, thereby allowing more Sulphur dioxide and other toxins to be discharged into our atmosphere. According to the Houston Chronicle, many in Washington and the power sector remain skeptical that the changes by EPA will reduce costs enough for coal plants to compete with fracked gas plants and wind farms. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, the fourth largest coal producer in the USA, was a top campaign contributor to President Trump and donated six-figure funds to the Rick Perry presidential candidacy in the 2012 elections.

Socialist are active in Mexico Beach, Florida. A number of socialist groups are helping the homeless after October’s Hurricane Michael, the strongest hurricane to hit land since Andrew, ripped through the town leaving it nearly leveled. “The American people are helping us,” City Manager Mario Gisbert of nearby Panama City Beach, said of the socialists. “FEMA will eventually come into the game and get the accolades in six months.” The Socialist Rifle Association, the Tallahassee Democratic Socialists and the autonomous direct-action group Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are raising money, patching roofs, distributing food, water and other necessities. Cosby Hayes of TDS told Truthout, “There’s so much predatory capitalism that moves in after a disaster. We wanted to circumvent that and bring relief directly to the people.” The Tallahassee socialists have raised over $10,000 for the effort. In Texas. The Democratic Socialist party has over 11 chapters throughout the state and at one time in the 1920’s the party had more Socialists than Republicans. Current DSA members include Rick Trevino, a school teacher in Marfa, who lost in a run-off election to Gina Ortiz Jones for District 23 Representative, and Franklin Bynum who won the judgeship of Criminal District Court No.8 in Houston last month.

Over 50 protesters were arrested at the office of California Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington DC earlier this month. Holding signs that read, “Act on Climate,” “Pass a New Green Deal,” “We have the right to a livable future,” “No More Excuses,” the Sunrise Movement, primarily a 20-something demographic, including several from Austin, pleaded for action from the soon-to-be Democratic majority at the House of Representatives. Bill McKibben of 350.org, tweeted, “These young people will spend the next seven decades living in an overheated world — they have the moral high ground.” 

Ethics more and more becomes the climate change issue. But scientist Klaus Lackner, formally with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now with the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions suggests that framing a warming Earth as a moral problem, where CO2 emitters are the bad guys, is a problem in itself. “We need to change the paradigm,” Lackner told New Yorker writer Elizabeth Colbert. Carbon dioxide should be regarded the same way we view other waste products, like sewage or garbage.” Lackner and a trove of entrepreneurs are now dialing in carbon dioxide removal technologies that take CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it to calcium carbonate, a fairly common mineral. Lackner envisions a future day where mom and pop operations pull a 40-foot trailer, suck a ton of CO2 daily and receive compensation as well as permits to dump the calcium carbonate byproduct. It would take a lot of Mom&Pops with 35 billion tons of CO2 emitted by human invention each year but proponents of the market style solution remind us there were no I-phones twenty years ago and now there are over a billion.

As we reported last week, insect populations are declining in records numbers. Of the two million species known on planet Earth, nearly 70% are insects and an essential part of the food chain. Scientist E O Wilson wrote, “if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” Is a biological annihilation happening in our time? The recent Living Planet Report published in October by the World Wildlife Federation Fund International and the Zoological Society of London suggests, it is. Vertebrates population, many at the lower end of the food chain that depend on insects for food, have declined by an average of 60% between 1970 and 2014. The tropics and freshwater systems including the Rio Grande are the most effected. The report suggests that the causes are “over exploitation of species, agriculture, and land conversion — all driven by runaway human consumption.” Some are calling the phenomena the Sixth Mass Extinction Event. The last mass extinction event, during the Cretaceous epoch, about 65 mya, was characterized by a rapid dieing-off of the dinosaurs, set off by climate change caused by the K meteorite that ejected millions of tons of soot, dust, and sulfur into the atmosphere. Survivors include garfish, sharks, alligators, crocodiles, birds, frogs and salamanders.

According to NASA meteorological data, the planet is now 1.8 degrees F warming than at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The question is will the increasing heat, trapped in our atmosphere, due to human caused greenhouse gas releases, mean a gradual change in climate or a sudden and exponential change? Something is happening. Twenty of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last 30 years. Heat waves in Texas are also becoming more common. This July, in the Tx Hill Country, Waco reached 114, and both Burnett and Austin topped out at 110 - all records. Modern day droughts are drier, - the worst was 2011 where TX averaged only 14.8 inches of rain. Rainstorms are also becoming more intense. Harvey, the prime example, dropped 55 inches of rain in a 72-hour period last year in Houston. Meteorologist Eric Holthaus wrote, “Harvey is what climate change looks like.” Wildfire is another vector in our day. In 2011 over 4 mil acres in TX burned, about double the previous record. Sea levels are rising and the rate of rise in increasing, hence GLO head George P Bush’s push to build a multi-billion-dollar tax-payer-funded concrete dyke to protect the coastal petro-chemical industry. Colbert writes, “still more warming is locked in. There’s so much inertia in the climate system, which is as vast as the earth itself, that the globe has yet to fully adjust to the hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide that have been added to the atmosphere in the past few decades. And every ten days another billion tons of carbon dioxide are released.”

Dallas-based Exxon-Mobil will vote at the annual shareholders meeting in March on whether the corporation will publicly set, monitor and report emission reduction targets for its fossil fuel operations. Andrew Logan, of the non-profit Ceres, said in a statement, “Global investors are increasingly calling on the companies that they own to demonstrate that they are prepared for a carbon-constrained future. Setting ambitious goals consistent with the Paris Agreement to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions — and taking concrete steps to actualize those goals — would be a sign to investors that Exxon is taking this issue seriously.” Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s 2 nd largest oil company after Exxon, recently agreed, after significant shareholder pressure, to link executive pay to emission reduction targets. According to the Dallas Morning News, Exxon Mobil, which previously was sued by investors who argued the company downplayed the risks of climate change, declined to comment on the new shareholder resolution.

For the first time in the country’s history a state legislature has a female majority. Nevada hit 51% after the elections this year, according to NPR. The national average is 29%. The new 86th Texas legislature clocks in with 22% of legislative seats held by females. 62% of the state’s 181 legislative seats are held by whites while the general state population is 43% white. Looking into the future, nearly 70% of Texans aged 19 or younger are Black or Latino.

The state of Texas workforce of nearly 13 million is among the highest of the states, but its unionization rate is below 5%, less than half the national average. The Socialist Worker states, “… the rich (in Texas) enjoy not only low corporate taxes but no income taxes — part of a strategy designed to transfer wealth back to the wealthy and leave behind cash-strapped state and local governments primed for imposing austerity measures.” Texas ranks 7 th among states for the most unequal income gaps. Midland ranked 8 th in the same category for cities. Texas is home to 47 billionaires who pay the same rate of tax as a single mom.

DECEMBER

Texas polluters, in the NO.1 polluting state, are getting a big break under President Trump. According tothe Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the EPA efforts to prosecute polluters has hit a30-year low. The EPA brought 166 cases to the courts for criminal prosecution last fiscal year making it the lowest total since President Reagan ruled. PEER ED Jeff Ruch said, “The absence of criminal prosecution means corporate polluters can be comfortable that they will suffer no personal consequences, no matter how egregious the offense.” The all-time high of 592 criminal pollution cases were logged under President Clinton in 1998.

Texas state government wants to take over coal ash regulation from the EPA. Spurred by former EPA Director Scott Pruitt’s action, that gave his home state of Oklahoma the right to regulate coal ash, Texas is now also hoping to get the feds out of the picture. According to Bloomberg, Texas leads the nation in coal ash production, a by-product of coal-firing, which contains a number of toxic chemicals including radium and arsenic. Coal ash is stored most often in contamination pools built with earthen levees and are susceptible to spills caused by heavy rains. A federal judge this week in Tennessee ordered a coal ash clean up contractor to mediate with its former workers, many who have no medical coverage. According to Greenwire, Jacobs Engineering told its workers that “coal ash was so safe, you can eat it.” Thirty workers have already died since the 2008 coal ash clean up contract, and three hundred other workers are dying. In November, a jury found Jacobs had caused the mass poisoning of an entire workforce.

While the Texas-New Mexico Permian Basin booms with oil & gas, New Mexico’s newly elected land commissioner wants to encourage wind and solar power development. Stephanie Garcia Richard requested the legislature to fund a state Office of Renewable Energy. According to the Associated Press, she’s also seeks to expand oversight of oil&gas development and hopes to hire four new district managers for the Permian. Meantime Texas Land Commissioner George P Bush has formed a joint venture with a private company to sell state-owned ground water in Culberson and Reeves counties to oil frackers. He’s also promoting a tax-payer funded concrete and steel dyke to protect petro-chemical plants in the Houston area from climate change storm surge.

Protesters from Native arctic tribes, joined forces with Texas Native Americans and environmentalists this week demanding SAXploration corporation in Houston pull out of the Arctic fossil fuel exploration project. The group presented over 100,000 letters from US citizens expressing their disappointment in nuclear power, hydroelectric power and carbon capture and storage, a market-based solution to climate change. According to the Atlantic, this prompted several major green non-profits like the Sierra Club not to sign the letter. Greg Carlock, with Data for Progress, told the Atlantic, “There is no scenario produced by the IPCC or the UN where we hit mid-century decarbonization without some kind of carbon capture.” The Atlantic stated, “Despite its scientific necessity, carbon-capture technology does not yet exist at any real industrial scale.” Yet, as reported several week ago on this program, carbon capture technology looks promising, although the philosophical question emerges: Is capitalistic style innovation our only way out of climate change or is capitalism itself the fundamental problem?

SAXploration’s attempt to seismically gauge these sacred native lands for fossil fuel extraction. Much of the gauging requires exploding dynamite, which not only disrupts the geology of the tundra, but also all living things including the caribou, the primary diet of these native Americans. According to participants, SAXploration failed to honor the peaceful invitation to talk and instead immediately called the police.

The 18th largest bank in the world, Barclay’s of the United Kingdom announced they will likely reject opportunities to finance oil and gas drilling in the Arctic as well as other climate change threats. According to the Hill, its new policy called Enhanced Due Dilligence, states, “Any client conducting new exploration of or extraction of Arctic oil and gas will be subject to EDD. Additionally, Barclays will conduct EDD on any financing transaction directly connected with the exploration or extraction of oil or gas in the Arctic. Under the EDD framework, we would not expect such project finance proposals to meet our criteria.” Moreover the bank stated it would be unlikely to finance projects in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), saying its “particularly fragile and pristine ecosystem” is “central to the livelihoods and culture of local indigenous peoples.” Under the Trump administration, Congress passed a 2017 law opening up the ANWR to fossil fuel extraction.

The Texas Public Utility Commission voted “No” last week to a request by two oil and coal burning power generators to charge other utilities extra for electricity transmission from rural areas. Wind and Solar power generation in remote areas like West Texas would have been the big loser according to the Houston Chronicle. DeeAnn Walker, chairwoman of the Public Utility Commission, wrote that she did not believe changing the way the state apportions transmission costs was worth the market disruption. Cal- pine Corp. and NRG Energy, both of Houston, asked the state to assign transmission losses based on the distance the power travels, a move that would benefit fossil fuel burning power companies who generally have power stations, built prior to zoning regulations in urban areas. Cyrus Reed, of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club told the Chronicle, “What we’ve told our generation community is that you can locate anywhere on the grid and we will pay for the electricity you generate. It would have really undermined that development.” According to the Chronicle, billions of investment dollars worldwide are attracted to wind and solar development in West Texas.

In an open letter to Governor Abbott, a Texas A&M Atmospheric professor, challenged the guv to sit down and listen to scientists on the overwhelming evidence of climate change and the role played by fossil fuels. Dr Andrew Dessler, wrote in the Houston Chronicle, “With the start of the 2019 legislative session, 26 climate scientists and experts, including myself, offered to brief Gov. Abbott on the hard evidence that the climate is changing, humans are primarily responsible, and if we don’t act soon, Texans may suffer mightily.” Governor Abbott, who’s election campaign has received over 20 million dollars from fossil fuel interests, said recently that it was “impossible” for him to know if fossil fuel burning was contributing to climate change. Dessler noted that recently even Dallas-based Exxon Mobil, publicly acknowledged human induced climate change as a real phenomenon.

Using satellite imagery, a big gap in the amount of flared gas reported in 2017 by Permian operators and actually flared was a key point in a report issued by the Environmental Defense Fund this week. The report suggests that oil company self-reporting is a failure. Moreover the 104 billion cubic feet of gas flared as opposed to the 55 billion reported was a colossal waste of natural resources, representing enough energy to power the top 7 cities of Texas for a full year. The report went on to say that the oil&gas industry’s demand for flaring permits was indicative of the low value of gas and the preference to extract crude, a more profitable commodity. The Wall Street Journal reported last year the Texas RR Commission issued over 20,000 uncontested flaring permits between 2014 and 2018. An economic explanation, including “we will loose money if we cannot flare” is sufficient to obtain the flaring permit from the TRC. Pipeline infrastructure at the well head to take away what is known as associated gas, methane, benzene, toluene, propane, etc is lagging. Flaring is also not always efficient. Plumes of black smoke and sometimes un-combusted gasses are vented directly into the atmosphere not only through unlit flare stacks but also via tank batteries, joints, valves, pipelines and compression stations. Seven of the nine Permian counties rank in the top ten counties for asthma in Texas.