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A Texas City Had a Bold New Climate Plan—Until a Gas Company Got Involved
This story is a collaboration from Floodlight and was also published in the Guardian and the San Antonio Report. When the city of Austin drafted a plan to shift away from fossil fuels, the local gas company was fast on the scene to try to scale back the ambition of the effort.
The Lege This Week: Adventures in Circular Finger Pointing
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
ERCOT Increased Revenue and Executive Pay In Years Before Texas Power Outages
Bill Magness sat in the Texas Senate chamber for several hours Thursday, defending himself and the Electric Reliability Corporation of Texas (ERCOT) that he runs. Senators grilled him about why the state’s once-obscure electric grid operator failed to prevent one of the worst power outages in U.S. history last week. ERCOT’s official mission as a nonprofit is “ensuring a reliable grid.” Instead, more than 4 million households lost electricity and heat in the middle of a severe winter storm. Texans across the state fought to survive in their freezing homes—many for days on end. At least three dozen people died.
Clogged Toilets, Snow Inside: How the Winter Storm Exacerbated Problems in Texas Lock-Ups
For more than a week, 60-year-old Willis Darby was pretty sure he had COVID-19: He was congested and suffering from headaches at the Bastrop County Jail where he is incarcerated. Then, Winter Storm Uri hit. The heater broke, he said, and staff brought him an extra blanket to help stave...
Low-Income Texans Already Face Frigid Temperatures at Home. Then the Winter Storm Hit.
This story was published in partnership with Southerly. When the temperature dropped into the single digits last Monday night, Edilisa wrapped herself and her 9-month-old baby in blankets and huddled in the closet of her studio apartment in Austin. It was the only way she could think to separate the two of them from the large windows that usually bring in lots of natural light — but with an arctic cold front sweeping over Texas, leaked a steady stream of frigid air.
“Power Companies Get Exactly What They Want”: How Texas Repeatedly Failed to Protect Its Power Grid Against Extreme Weather
Jeremy Schwartz, Kiah Collier and Vianna Davila, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica Feb 23, 2021, 8:00 am CST. “Power companies get exactly what they want”: How Texas repeatedly failed to protect its power grid against extreme weather” 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.
Why Texas Wasn’t Prepared for Winter Storm Uri
The snow has melted and the record-breaking, freezing temperatures have warmed back up, but Texans in nearly every county will be dealing with the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri for months to come. It’s likely one of the most widespread disasters to face the state, as millions of people were stranded in cold homes for days with limited or no access to electricity and heat. About half the state’s population was without potable water late last week, and many still face water and food shortages. All eyes are on how the state’s power grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), failed so spectacularly. But in the middle of the crisis, Governor Greg Abbott told Texans to turn to Google, instead of his office, for advice on where to go and what to do in the extreme cold. What could state and local leaders have done to prepare their citizens?
The Lege This Week: Out Cold
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis. Now, under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Nine Texans On How They Survived A Frozen Week
After an unprecedented freeze swept Texas, the state’s grid approached a catastrophic blackout. Millions of Texans lost power or water—or both. As a winter storm sent temperatures plummeting across Texas this week and the state’s power grid approached total failure, millions of people were left freezing in their homes without heat. Crises have compounded crises as residents are forced to contend with single digit temperatures, icy roads, non-potable or non-existent water sources, and food shortages—all amid an ongoing pandemic. We spoke with people around the state about their experiences and how they made do during this long, cold week.
Top Texas Lawmakers Call for Investigation and Action on State’s Energy Grid Operator
Texas’ top elected officials called for legislation and investigations into the operation of the state’s power grid after a massive winter storm caused millions of residents in the state to lose power for long spans during frigid temperatures. Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared the reform of the Electric Reliability...
On Daily Life in County Line, A Former Freedmen’s Colony
A long time ago, or so it seems, I went to County Line for the first time and met the Upshaw family. County Line, also known as the Upshaw Community, is in northwest Nacogdoches County in Deep East Texas. That was 1988. I was looking for a photo project to do in East Texas while visiting my parents in Nacogdoches. A family friend told me about African American land-owner communities dating from the Emancipation, places established by emancipated African Americans on land they owned.
The ‘Culture of Violence’ Inside Austin’s Police Academy
An averted tragedy first made Summer Spisak consider the drastic career change that landed her in Austin’s police training academy. A police officer, she says, “literally saved my family member’s life, essentially by talking them down from committing suicide.” Around the same time in 2016, an ambush in Dallas that killed five officers and injured nine others further inspired Spisak to consider leaving her business operations job at Intel, where she’d worked for nearly a decade. In the aftermath of the ambush, Dallas’ police chief challenged people who criticized the department to apply and help change the profession from the inside, which resonated with Spisak. “I didn’t feel like I was making much of an impact on my community,” she recalls.
The Lege This Week: Senators Poke, Prod and Punch Paxton
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis. Now, under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Biden Plans to Ban All New Fracking Leases on Public Land. Will He Actually Do It?
In 2017, the oil industry, aided by Donald Trump’s Interior Department, set its sights on a swath of plains northwest of Corpus Christi. The 1,600 acres, located in and around Choke Canyon Reservoir, were deemed attractive by drillers who wanted to set up fracking operations there. The reservoir is located in the Eagle Ford Shale play, the state’s second richest oil field. The federal government could, if it so chose, auction off the parcels to the highest bidder, allowing drillers to frack the natural resources far below the ground.
How Texas Courts Went Virtual
In a West Texas district court Zoom hearing on Tuesday, an unexpected face joined the meeting: a cat. Or, more accurately, 69-year-old Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton, trapped in a virtual filter. His face replaced with the countenance of a somber feline, the lawyer assured the judge, “I’m here live; I’m not a cat.”
The Sunniest City in Texas is Expanding … Natural Gas Production
Jeanette Lara is one of a handful of doctors who serves the small, unincorporated community of Chaparral, New Mexico. Every day, when she drops off her 8-month-old son to his grandparents before work, she drives past the Newman Power Station, a natural gas plant just across the Texas border in El Paso, which provides power to residents in both states.
In ‘At the Ready,’ Latinx High Schoolers Train to Be Border Patrol Agents
“Here’s the schedule: Active shooter at 12,” says El Paso area high school teacher Louie Jimenez in the first minute of. . “Hostage negotiation, 1:30. And then drug raid at 2:30.” He’s addressing a class of students in the school’s criminal justice club; they wear fake plastic pistols in holsters and bulletproof vests. This schedule is part of the Border Challenge competition they’ve been preparing for all year, where they compete in staged, high-stakes scenarios designed for police and Border Patrol agents. The kids hope winning the competition will make them stronger candidates for getting hired in the field.
As more homicide cases go unsolved, the backlog of unsolved murders grows and serial killers are free to kill again. Too few police departments are effectively deploying their resources to stop them.
Nearly every week M.J. Jennings went shopping at the Dallas Galleria with her mother, Leah Corken, an 83-year-old widow who had moved to Texas to live near her daughter. On their last visit, Corken, who had tiny feet and hands, needed a new pair of slides, so they stopped at her favorite shoe store, the only one with a decent selection in size 5. Later, they caught a matinee at an upscale theater. “We always got a pepperoni pizza and split it,” Jennings said of their weekly ritual. “She always got her own popcorn from the popcorn stand and put on just the kind of butter she wanted.” They leaned back in reclining seats, munched popcorn, sipped wine, and laughed out loud at a comedy that featured Meryl Streep singing hilariously off-key. That afternoon, the only sad note came when Corken expressed distress over the unexpected deaths of two friends at Tradition-Prestonwood Senior Living, the luxury complex where she’d moved in 2010.
The Lege This Week: Amid Pandemic, Abbott Prioritizes Red Meat
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis. Now, under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Editorial: Texas Wasn’t Prepared for the Statewide Vaccine Rush
When my parents, Joe and Zelma Brockman, arrived at a Grand Prairie clinic for their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, they were expecting a wait. They’d driven by a couple days earlier and seen a long line out front. So on January 4, they went to Purple Hearts Primary Care Services first thing in the morning, trying to beat the rush. But when they arrived just after it opened at 9 a.m., a line already stretched from the entrance, past neighboring businesses in the strip shopping center, and around to the back of the building. Some people had been there since 6:30 a.m.
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The Texas Observer is an Austin-based nonprofit news organization known for fearless investigative reporting, narrative storytelling and sophisticated cultural criticism about all things Texan.