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August 24, 2013

ECONOTES 2013-08-27: Environmental Headlines for the Houston Region

Featured

  1. Whistleblower, Landowners: TransCanada is Botching the Job on Keystone XL Pipeline (Priscilla Mosqueda – Texas Observer, 8/9/2013)
    TransCanada has long contended that Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever built. But in East Texas, landowners are growing increasingly alarmed by what they’ve seen first-hand: multiple repairs on pipeline sections with dents, faulty welds and other anomalies. The Oklahoma-to-Texas segment of Keystone XL is 90 percent complete, according to the company, and is expected to come online later this year.
    http://www.texasobserver.org/
  2. Houston at risk: Rising sea level projected to increase flooding costs (Texas Climate News, 8/26/2013)
    A new World Bank study and cautionary comments by a Rice University oceanographer both warn that Houston, like Galveston, is also threatened by flooding because of the sea-level rise that scientists say manmade global warming will propel through the century. The World Bank study projected that among the world’s 136 biggest coastal cities, Houston will have the seventh-largest percentage increase in average annual losses from sea-level rise by 2050.
    http://texasclimatenews.org/
  3. In the Garden With Urban Harvest: That swath of lawn proves not so green after all (Chris LaChance – Houston Chronicle, 8/23/2013)
    When we say the word landscape, most of us conjure up that big swath of a perfectly mowed, managed, monoculture. In fact, more than 40 million acres, roughly the size of the state of New York, are covered in it, making lawns, or turf grass, our largest irrigated crop. As much as 238 gallons of water per person, per day is applied to turf grasses in America. For homeowners, because lawn care does not consume much of their household budget, they tend to use more, lots more. With much of the country experiencing drought, lawns have been under attack for the copious amounts of water it takes to maintain them. Some cities have initiated program to pay residents to remove their turf. Austin fines its residents $475 if they are caught irrigating their yards during daylight hours. Restrictions for outside water use in the Houston area always are looming.
    http://www.chron.com/

EcoNotes