ENVIRONMENTAL HEADLINES, OCTOBER 7 – 13

PERRY CALLS FOR POWER MARKET PROBE
Galveston County Daily News 10/11/06
Texas’ governor says he wants anyone who has manipulated the energy market dealt with ‘harshly’ but says the suspected company’s name should be kept secret.

FULL STEAM AHEAD FOR NEW BP PLANT
Galveston County Daily News 10/11/06
TEXAS CITY – BP plans to build a large steam-powered turbine plant at its local refinery.

HABITAT LOSS, HUMIDITY POSSIBLY BEHIND BAT RUN-INS
Houston Chronicle 10/10/06
Members of the school choir walk past orchestra director Michael Jones’s classroom humming the theme song to Batman. Other students ask to see his rabies tags.

WOODLANDS RESIDENTS EYE ENCROACHING HOUSTON
Houston Chronicle 10/8/06
THE WOODLANDS – The Woodlands may be only 25 miles away from the urban bustle of Houston, but its idyllic image seems a lifetime away. And that’s the way the people who live here want it to be.

ANNEXED KINGWOOD SPLIT ON EFFECTS

MAGNOLIA BALLROOM BECOMES PROTECTED LANDMARK
Houston Chronicle 10/10/06
It’s tempting to say that the jolly imbibers at the old Magnolia Brewery’s taproom sucked down the 5-cent mugs of suds until they saw pink monkeys. But that’s twisting history, mixing up then and now.

BY MONITORING HAWKS, GROUP CAN HELP THE ECOLOGY
Houston Chronicle 10/7/06
Jeff Smith can identify hawks in flight when they appear as mere specks in the sky.

VOLUNTEERS COMB AREA FOR BUTTERFLIES

PROUDLY PARTISAN FOR TEXAS PARKS
Houston Chronicle 10/7/06
The public’s awareness of the financial desperation of the Texas state park system has spread so that we now hear a statewide upwelling of support for the Texas state parks. There is a chorus of calls to the Texas Legislature to increase state park funding. Park supporters consistently recommend the elimination of the cap set on the amount of the “sporting goods sales tax” authorized to flow into the state parks’ budget, currently set at $32 million.

A HARBOR FIXTURE FOR YEARS, THE HUGE DRILLING RIG BEGAN TO LEAK OIL RECENTLY
Houston Chronicle 10/12/06
QUINTANA – For fourteen years the old, mobile offshore-drilling unit Zeus has sat rusting on the edge of the Freeport harbor channel, looming as a threat that could someday ooze oily goo into sensitive estuaries or, worse, topple over and close one of the busiest waterways in Texas.