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October 6, 2013

ECONOTES 2013-10-08: Environmental Headlines for the Houston Region

Featured

  1. Capture rain to save on water bill, help environment (Patricia Lopez – ABC 13 News, 10/3/2013)
    Houston has been getting some much needed rain lately, but a time will come again when a lack of precipitation will have communities restricting water usage. For a few dollars, and some elbow grease, you can build your own rain barrel system. One rain barrel collects on average one thousand gallons a year. If a whole block of homes had a total of 40 barrels, that’s 42,000 gallons a year. And for the big impact, say if a community of 900 homes, like Nassau Bay, and each had a barrel, that would come out to 945,000 gallons or rain water collected in one year. It’s a big savings for everyone’s water bill.
    http://abclocal.go.com/
  2. Pedestrian Bridges Connecting Neighborhoods North and South of the Bayou to Open (Buffalo Bayou Park News, 9/27/2013)
    Crossing Buffalo Bayou is about to get a whole lot easier for walkers, runners, and cyclists. After months of construction, Buffalo Bayou Partnership is pleased to share the news that the Jackson Hill Bridge officially opened to pedestrians on September 27th. The 345-foot-long bridge connects with the existing bridge over Memorial Drive providing access to Allen Parkway and connecting the neighborhoods north and south of the bayou.
    http://buffalobayoupark.org/
  3. “What is the role of flood control?”: Two Perspectives in the Houston Chronicle’s Opinion Section (Evelyn Merz of the Sierra Club and Michael D. Talbott of the Harris County Flood Control District, Houston Chronicle, 10/6/2013)
    The Memorial Park Demonstration Project on Buffalo Bayou is either an earth-churning mistake that will severely impact a much-beloved parcel of Houston’s core identity or the last word in sustainable erosion control, depending on what side of the bayou divide you occupy.http://www.houstonchronicle.com
  4. TSU pioneer defines a new kind of justice (Matthew Tresaugue, Houston Chronicle, 10/6/2013)
    For his work, [Robert] Bullard is described by many as the father of environmental justice. Last month the Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest environmental group, awarded him its highest honor, joining a list that includes Ansel Adams, Jacques Costeau and Al Gore.
    www.houstonchronicle.com
  5. Stefan Wray: Organizer of an Austin symposium on adapting to climate change (Texas Climate News, 10/4/2013)
    Possible policies and actions to deal with global warming and associated climate change are often classified in a couple of broad areas known as “mitigation” and “adaptation”. Mitigation strategies – adopting a tax on greenhouse-emissions, say, or introducing a low-carbon technology – are aimed at reducing the human impacts that scientists say are mainly driving climate warming. Adaptation strategies, on the other hand, are aimed at assessing and making plans to deal with the manifestations of human-caused climate change.
    http://texasclimatenews.org/

EcoNotes