When the levee breaks…

Oh wait, your congresswoman just wants to get rid of them all together.

Either way, remember this –

Crippled Houston watches dams, levees; forecast offers hope

A pair of 70-year-old reservoir dams that protect downtown Houston and a levee in a suburban subdivision began overflowing Tuesday, adding to the rising floodwaters from Harvey that have crippled the area after five consecutive days of rain that set a new continental U.S. record for rainfall for a tropical system.

Brazoria County authorities posted a message on Twitter warning that the levee at Columbia Lakes south of Houston had been breached and telling people to "GET OUT NOW!!" Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta said residents were warned that the levee would be overtopped at some point, and a mandatory evacuation order was given Sunday.

Engineers began releasing water from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs Monday to ease the strain on the dams. But the releases were not enough to relieve the pressure after one of the heaviest downpours in U.S. history, Army Corps of Engineers officials said. Both reservoirs are at record highs.

The release of the water means that more homes and streets will flood, and some homes will be inundated for up to a month, said Jeff Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control District.

The county is trying to determine where the water will go, Lindner said.

Drilling Down

Contrary to what the industry says, there are down sides to drilling... and if you can believe this, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram mentions some.  Of course the article came from the Associated Press.

One of our regular contributors told us of a recent family trip out of state.  They stopped to stay the night in a small town but hotel after hotel had no rooms available.  When they finally found one with an opening, the clerk told them, "Get your family, get back in your car and get on the highway.  Drive to the next town and stay there.  They don't call these boys, "Oil Field Trash" for nothing..."

Now we aren't painting all the industry with the same brush, but when a hotel passes on revenue for a night, something's up.  Sounds like the crime rate.

Make note in the article of the difference in what happens in Texas.

In a modern-day echo of the raucous Old West, small towns enjoying a boom in oil and gas drilling are seeing a sharp increase in drunken driving, bar fights and other hell-raising, blamed largely on an influx of young men who find themselves with lots of money in their pockets and nothing to do after they get off work.

Authorities in Pennsylvania and other states are quick to point out that the vast majority of workers streaming in are law-abiding. But they also say the drilling industry has brought with it a hard-working, hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble element that, in some places, threatens to overwhelm law enforcement.

But he said that many in the industry obey the law and that authorities in Pennsylvania have less tolerance for troublemakers than police in small-town Texas, where rig workers are used to raising hell and getting a pass from law enforcement.

"You can do that [stuff] and get away with it," Bourque said. In Pennsylvania, "they look at it totally different."

Houston, we have a problem

With OUR Water.

Read about it on TXSharon.  Think it couldn't happen here?  It is.

Want to know the truth?

About Texas Air Quality, TCEQ and the EPA? 

Start here.  And this doesn't even cover the BS.  (Barnett Shale to you newbies).

Read about

Mayor Bill White in the Texas Monthly. Read the entire article. Think Houston would trade us?

Over the years he's made some noise with both TCEQ and the EPA. We need more mayors like him! The article begins the story as Hurricane Katrina has slammed into New Orleans and 200,000 evacuees have ended up in his town...

He is learning, as the rest of America will soon realize, to its horror, that the federal government cannot be counted on for much of anything. Nor, really, can the State of Texas. Nor, really, can anyone else.

He has instead taken on more than a dozen major issues, many of which carried considerable political risk. He banned, for all practical purposes, lobbyists from city hall and from any involvement in city contracts, thereby cleaning up what many had come to call “the trough.”


White also went after Lyondell Chemical, the city’s largest emitter of the carcinogen benzene. Unable to force compliance under city laws, he tried an inventive strategy: He challenged Lyondell’s operating permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “If the company believes that it’s just fine to put tons and tons of benzene in the air,” White told the Chronicle last year, in full trial lawyer mode, “then we would like to hear what scientific evidence they have that benzene is good for you.” The matter is still pending.



In July 2008 White went even further: He challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s basic methods of estimating levels of pollutants. He insisted that because of the EPA’s flawed methods, emissions of harmful chemicals in Houston were many times what they were reported to be. The EPA’s reply, which made national news, came in April 2009. To the amazement of many, the agency agreed with White and promised to overhaul the way it calculates cancer-causing emissions from plants.