News
TCEQ awards Meadows Center $350,000 for Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan
The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University has been awarded a $351,101 grant from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to implement Years 4-6 of the Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan (WPP). The Cypress Creek WPP is...
Festival in Dripping Springs celebrates Hill Country living
The Hill Country Living FESTIVAL + Rainwater Revival returns to the Dripping Spring Ranch Park on Saturday, April 4, from 10am to 5pm. This free, one-day event promises something for everyone who loves the Texas Hill Country — whether you call it home now, plan to...
Tandy Hills Natural Area: A lasting legacy
I first started to get excited in late December 2019 when I first heard about the City of Fort Worth's new, Open Space Acquisitionsprogram. After watching the City Council work session video, I could tell they were serious. District 7 Rep, Kelly Allen Gray, actually...
Officials: San Antonio should continue managing Edwards Aquifer program, not give it to SAWS
San Antonio should keep a program aimed at protecting the Edwards Aquifer if voters choose to shift sales tax money that funds the program to instead boost public transit, city officials said Wednesday. Mayor Ron Nirenberg has sought to settle the fate of the Edwards...
Fredericksburg earns ‘dark sky’ designation
After review by the International Dark-Sky Association Board, the City of Fredericksburg’s application to become an International Dark Sky Community was unanimously endorsed. “The IDA works to protect the night skies for present and future generations by requiring...
Chronic Wasting Disease discovered at deer breeding facility in Kimble County
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has been discovered in a 5 ½-year-old white-tailed deer in a Kimble County deer breeding facility, marking the first positive detection of the disease in the county. The tissue samples submitted by the breeding facility as part of routine...
Hill Country residents challenge the state to stop quarry
Comal County residents are suing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to stop the construction of a quarry they say will pollute the air with a lung-damaging contaminate. Stop 3009 Vulcan Quarry and Friends of Dry Comal Creek filed a lawsuit in Travis County...
Invasive tilapia are taking over Texas waters, including two San Antonio lakes
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is asking anyone who reels in tilapia at two San Antonio lakes to not return it to the water. There is apparently a lot of tilapia, a non-native species of fish that have been taking over freshwater lakes and rivers in Texas,...
Editorial: Yes, San Antonio can improve transit and protect aquifer
Too often in recent months, the discussion over Edwards Aquifer protection and improving transit was framed as an either/or proposition. Either San Antonio could improve transit, or it could continue to fund aquifer protection. Such a limited view always struck us as...
City staff propose keeping aquifer protection program under city control
As city officials try to get massive transportation plans moving, they are pushing a new plan to continue funding the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program. In a presentation to council members on Wednesday, city staff recommended keeping the EAPP under the city’s...
Proaction needed for water stewardship
Local water resources grabbed state-level attention at the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District last week. State Rep. Kyle Biedermann and his environmental policy analyst, Larry Bailey, joined Boerne Mayor Tim Handren in addressing the CCGCD directors and...
WVWA’s response to Judge Pittman’s ruling on the PHP
The Wimberley Valley Watershed Association has been a part of the fight against the Permian Highway Pipeline since we first heard about the project in October of 2018 (www.SaveTheHillCountry.org). We have been working to rally our communities across the Hill Country...
Take This Job: Testing water quality in Austin with TCEQ
Have you ever wondered how the quality of the water in our environment is tested? KVUE's Anavid Reyes got to check it out with the folks at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality(TCEQ). TCEQ strives to protect our state's public health and natural resources....
Hill Country pipeline opponents dealt setback
Opponents of a controversial natural gas pipeline through the picturesque Texas Hill Country lost a legal battle but vow to continue their fight against Houston pipeline operator Kinder Morgan. A U.S. district court judge in Austin on Friday rejected a request for a...
Swine country: How feral pigs took over the U.S.
For millions of years, as pigs snorted and snuffed their way across the planet, evolving and learning to dodge gray wolves and tigers and coyotes and alligators, they were almost assuredly safe from any potential threats from the sky. Then they arrived in Texas, where...
TESPA sues Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District over Needmore Permit
The Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association (TESPA) announced today that it has filed suit in Travis County District Court challenging the decision by the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District (BSEACD) to issue a permit to Needmore Water, LLC to...
Where light pollution is seeping into the rural night sky
Artificial light that floods the night sky is thought to be only an urban phenomenon. But when you adjust for population, the picture is dramatically different. The rule of thumb is that if you want to see the Milky Way, you have to venture out to the countryside....
Hays County: 2020 primary elections voter guide
Federal: U.S. Senate Every state in the U.S. elects two people to represent them in the U.S. Senate, which is the upper chamber of Congress. They are elected statewide for six-year terms. Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s term is up for re-election this year. About a dozen...
Judge: Pipeline through Hill Country can move forward
A federal judge has rejected an effort to halt construction of a pipeline that would carry natural gas from West Texas to refineries on the Texas coast. Officials from the city of Austin, Travis and Hays counties, and other local governments joined private landowners...
Aquifer district names new general manager
The Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District is pleased to announce Vanessa Escobar has been named General Manager. As a water resource professional in Texas, she has focused her work over the last 15 years in water conservation, water resources planning,...
Texas needs to tackle water scarcity before it gets worse
Texas is no stranger to water scarcity. In every decade of the twentieth century, Texas has experienced a serious drought. However, Texas’ ability to outmaneuver its water crisis has a limit. A deepening drought is now affecting a large part of Texas. On Thursday,...
Today, 30th anniversary of the Pale Blue Dot
February 14, 1990. Today is the 30th anniversary of an iconic image of Earth, seen from Saturn, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It turned out to be one of the most memorable images ever taken from space. The image came to be known as the Pale Blue Dot, and to be...
Preserving the night sky in Austin
Most evenings in Central Texas, the sky transforms into the legendary violet crown before falling into darkness. Although humans wait for the beauty of the sunset, it is the darkness that animals need, according to Cliff Kaplan of the Hill Country Alliance. “All of...
Resilience along a river
It’s a crisp November after-noon and landowner Suzanne Davis is admiring native bald cypress seedlings while cutting back invasive Brazilian verbena along her stretch of the Blanco River. Davis and her husband, Edward, live in Wimberley, where, four years ago, the...
Taking on wildlife disease
The Pennsylvania Wildlife Futures Program, a collaboration between the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, will leverage Penn Vet’s expertise to address wildlife health problems. When wildlife biologist Matthew Schnupp began his career,...
Taking a look at trends for our land
It should be no surprise that our growing population has put pressure on the land in Comal County. As the second fastest growing county in the nation, we have witnessed the conversion of many acres from open land to developed land. Our experience has been put into the...
Texas Can’t Quit the Aoudad
Allen Smith decided long ago what to do about the aoudads that wander onto his family’s land. “The first four I saw, I shot,” he tells me. From 5,000 feet up, in Smith’s Cessna Skymaster, the choices other Texans have made for their land roll out below—the network of...
NRI publishes Status Update and Trends of Texas Working Lands 1997-2017
The new Texas Land Trends report Status Update and Trends of Texas Working Lands 1997–2017, produced by NRI, has now been published. Land-trends reports have informed private and public landowners and decision-makers for more than two decades. “With this report, we...
Report: Austin and San Antonio best in Texas for fighting water pollution with nature-based infrastructure
Amid ongoing problems with water pollution and flooding, cities across Texas are turning to nature-based infrastructure. San Antonio and Austin lead the way, followed closely by Harris County, according to a new report by Environment Texas Research and Policy Center,...
Fireflies have a mating problem: The lights are always on
These are tough times for fireflies. Like a lot of other insects, they face increasing threats from habitat loss, pesticides and pollution. But they also have a problem that’s unique to luminous bugs: It’s getting harder for them to reproduce because light pollution...