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November 26, 2012

ECONOTES 2012-11-26: Environmental Headlines for the Houston Region

Featured

  1. Houston Vies For Bloomberg’s $5 Million To Help Create ‘One Bin For All’ (KUHF News, 11/21/12)
    Houston was selected out of 300 U.S. cities to be named as one of 20 finalists for Mayor Bloomberg’s Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge for the “Total Reuse: One Bin for All”. The idea is there will be one bin where you throw everything: food waste, recyclables, trash and glass. This could improve the rate of recycling from 15% to somewhere between 55% and 75%.
    http://app1.kuhf.org/
  2. Dead fish symptom of ailing bayous (Harvey Rice – Houston Chronicle, 11/18/12)
    Fish kills, where thousands of fish die for lack of oxygen in the water, are a symptom of urban encroachment on bayous like Dickinson that lace the Houston region. The urbanized area in the Dickinson Bayou watershed more than doubled between 2002 and 2008. The 27 miles of Dickinson Bayou that snake through Galveston and Brazoria counties are plagued with low oxygen levels that occasionally kill fish. The bayou is filled with bacteria that can cause illness to swimmers and pollutants such as oil, pesticides, human waste from septic tanks and animal waste washed into the bayou through storm drains.
    http://www.chron.com/
  3. Drought drives rainwater collection across Texas (David Barer – The Statesman, 11/23/12)
    The recent drought has increased the sales of rainwater collection systems. A system can be anything from a 55-gallon barrel stuck beneath a gutter to a full-roof system with pumps and filtration. Harvesting rainwater is more sustainable than well drilling, although well drilling relieves strain on municipal reservoirs.
    http://www.statesman.com/

EcoNotes