October 22nd, 2012
By Jan Barry
I’ve seen the future and it’s called Texas! That’s the gist of how a liberal environmental activist, a conservative Congressman and many other folks described the Lone Star State at the 22nd annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference that ended Sunday in Lubbock, Texas.
Here’s what the future looks like, according to an astounding variety of people who spoke with the assembled writers, television and radio personalities, journalism professors, environmental activists and industry representatives at the event, hosted by Texas Tech University. Besides panel discussions at the Overton Hotel and Conference Center, where I was a moderator of a lunch discussion, busloads of conference attendees fanned out from Lubbock across the Texas plains to see various places and issues first-hand. Here’re some highlights of what they heard and saw:
Here’re some of the news reports that this eco-journalism spotlight on Texas generated:
“President of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce Mike George introduced Odessa to a group of environmental reporters in a unique way — calling the city the Clean Energy Capital of the World,” the Odessa American newspaper reported of the visit by a busload of Society of Environmental Journalists attendees.
“George then went on to talk about Duke Energy’s 95-turbine wind farm in Notrees and how it is the home to a 36-megawatt battery storage facility, the biggest battery storage unit for any wind farm in the world,” added Odessa American reporter Nathaniel Miller. Then he listed plans for a 500-acre solar farm. And then there’s the 400-megawatt “clean coal” electricity generating plant planned for next year with funding from the federal government and the Export-Import Bank of China that is “designed to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces and sell the CO2 as enhanced oil-recovery, which will help companies bring more oil out of the ground.”
“Shane Leverett and his neighbors in Gardendale, Texas, are livid that their properties are now graced with tall white stakes, some less than 150 feet from their homes,” noted a reporter from Coloradoan.com, Bobby Magill. “Those stakes are signs that an oil company plans to come soon to drill their yards and ranch land in Gardendale, a ranching community on the broad mesquite flats between Midland and Odessa in the heart of the oil-rich Permian Basin.”
In contrast, Magill added, “Unlike Colorado, where the state regulations currently being amended determine oil and gas well setbacks, Texas allows cities to regulate setbacks and other oil and gas issues themselves. In dense urban areas, Colorado’s current setback is 350 feet from homes.”
“Brooks Hodges took over as general manager of Pitchfork Land & Cattle Co. last year in the midst of a drought and then had to deal with wildfire devouring 90,000 acres of native pasture,” noted an editor at AgFax.com, Chris Clayton.
“A group of journalists participating in the Society of Environmental Journalists annual meeting in Lubbock, Texas, toured the Pitchfork Ranch near Guthrie on Thursday as well as the Hale Center Feedyard outside Hale Center, Texas,” Clayton wrote. Here’s what they found:
“Drought recovery remains slow for cow-calf operators. There won’t be any official USDA numbers on whether ranchers are starting to rebuild their herds until January, but numbers earlier this year showed the Texas cow herd had 650,000 fewer head than a year earlier. Overall, the entire cattle herd in Texas declined from 13 million head to 11.9 million.”
(This article was also posted at EarthAirWater.)
Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: coal, fracking, oil, Society of Environmental Journalists, Texas, water
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I live in Austin, Texas, and that isn’t representative of the entire state. Among other factors, there’s less environmental pollution, a better arts and culture environment, and the presence of a great (and very large) university. In particular, I wouldn’t recommend the Midland-Odessa area as a tourism destination.
There are places I would rather live, despite being born in Texas and maintaining it as my official residence during all my years of wandering. Limiting those choices to the U.S., all of them have tax rates that are prohibitive. For example, there’s one place in Maryland I would prefer to be in, but the state and local taxes are so high that it doesn’t make sense. Roughly, it would cost me about one month of take-home pay per year to live there instead of in Texas. No difference in the quality of police, fire, and all other essential services … just higher taxes.
And as long as we’re talking about the environment — I think most other states of any significant size and population have problems that are at least as serious.
I enjoyed my (brief) stay in west Texas. Traffic was light compared with New Jersey! Previously been in Amarillo, Ft. Worth, Dallas and Houston. After driving across the US twice in recent years, I found I missed autumn leaves the most.