News & Updates
How eminent domain is blighting farmers in path of gas pipeline
In July 2015, Neal Laferriere and his wife, Beth, purchased a home in Summers county, West Virginia. The first time they visited the property after purchasing it, they found stakes outlining what they would later find out to be the route for a gas pipeline. About two...
100 years later, Medina Lake dam still a marvel
The Medina Lake dam is a huge block of concrete, lodged in a canyon, which impounds a waterway flowing along the border of Bandera and Medina counties. But that description hardly does justice to the enduring edifice on the Medina River, say those behind Saturday's...
Hays County, Kyle, landowner lawsuit against railroad commission questions pipeline oversight
Two years ago, Heinz Stefan Roesch bought a roughly 30-acre property along RR 1623, outside of the city of Blanco. His whole family is from the Hill Country, he said, and he had been saving all his life to buy something just like it. Last fall, he started hearing...
One man’s half-century project to heal a Hill Country landscape created a legacy reaching far beyond his fenceline
In 1969, a San Antonio fried-chicken tycoon was struck by a life-changing idea: He would find, buy, and heal “the sorriest piece of land in the Hill Country.” Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Bamberger Ranch Preserve sprawls across 5,500 acres of grassy hills...
Texas House passes bill to spend more than $3 billion to help pay for flood control projects
Nearly two years after Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas coast, the Texas House approved legislation Thursday that would pull more than $3 billion from the state's rainy day fund to help pay for flood control projects statewide. The House version of Senate Bill 7 is...
Opinion: Through grandmother’s house it goes – Kinder Morgan’s pipeline, that is
Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan would very much like to route a pipeline over the aquifer and through the woods, grandmother’s house be damned. Or condemned, as the case may be. We are talking about KM’s planned Permian Highway Pipeline, a 430-mile-long, 42-inch-diameter...
Centuries-old irrigation system shows how to manage scarce water
It’s spring again, the time of year—for the 300th time in some instances—when New Mexico communities come together to clean the acequias, irrigation channels that carry snowmelt from the mountains to newly tilled farm fields. Each annual cleaning is one more...
Cave explorers discover new 600-foot passage in Natural Bridge Caverns
After six hours of trekking through cappuccino-colored muck last week, a team of cavers entered a previously unexplored 600-foot-long passage inside Natural Bridge Caverns. The passage, located 145 feet underground, is full of mineral-rich pools of water bordered by...
Local official opposes state water bill in Austin hearing
Last week Boerne’s Milan Michalec, chairman of Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, was in Austin speaking against House Bill 1806. Authored by Senator Donna Campbell, HB 1806 was the subject of a public hearing in the Agriculture, Water and Rural Affairs...