Texas

EL PASO—Dozens of people crammed into a conference room on the eastern edge of El Paso on a recent Thursday evening. Some brought signs, some wore T-shirts, others diligently wrote their feedback on notecards. But the message was resounding: Don’t build a highway near our wetland.  Conservation advocates in El Paso say the Texas Department […]

This story was published in partnership by Inside Climate News and the Texas Observer.  Juan Benito Mancias draws his identity from the landscape at the Rio Grande’s end not because he owns it, but because it owns his people, literally. His ancestors lie buried in it, going back millennia. Sadly for Mancias, U.S. law provides […]

This article was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans—and engages with them—about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. STARR COUNTY—In 2009, on a plot of shrub-covered cattle land about 45 miles northwest of McAllen, Shell buried and abandoned a well it drilled to look for gas. […]

This article was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans—and engages with them—about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. JEFFERSON COUNTY—A concrete platform with fading blue paint marks the birthplace of the modern oil and gas industry in southeast Texas. Weather-beaten signs describe how drillers tapped the […]

He noticed the light-headedness first. Then there was stifling heat, which made everything seem to be moving in slow motion. And by the time Oscar Rodriguez, a bricklayer from Cypress, Texas, was able to find shelter under an air conditioner during a triple-digit degree day last summer, he realized that he may have just escaped […]

Frigid weather this month caused industrial facilities across Texas to release unplanned air pollution as machinery froze, power went out and icy conditions blocked service crews.  Over four chilly days between Jan. 14 and 17, companies submitted reports to Texas’ environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, that attributed at least 36 instances of “unintentional” […]