The latest environment news from The Texas Tribune.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Executive Director Toby Baker told a special panel of state senators on Thursday that first responders are still actively managing an incident at a Houston-area petrochemical facility that began last month. Full Story
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For years, Diane Wilson has tried to get Formosa Plastics Corp. to stop discharging plastic pellets from its sprawling petrochemical complex on the Central Texas coast. This week, she's getting her day in court. Full Story
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Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an environmental lawsuit against Intercontinental Terminals late Friday seeking tens of thousands of dollars in damages. Full Story
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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said that at the maximum levels detected, the benzene levels could cause headaches and nausea, but no long-term effects. State Rep. Briscoe Cain has called for an investigation into the incident. Full Story
A decade ago, Laredo leaders hatched an idea for a riverfront development aimed at luring more people to downtown. Now they're trying to get the federal government to make it part of President Donald Trump's border wall. Full Story
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A fire that broke out Sunday morning at a petrochemical storage facility in the industrial Houston suburb stopped burning overnight. Full Story
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In a statement Monday afternoon, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said air quality monitoring "had not detected any immediate health concerns at ground level" amid a multi-tank fire at a petrochemical storage facility near Houston. Full Story
Before Hurricane Harvey, state aquarium staff evacuated turtles, stingrays, dolphins and other recovering animals from an aging rescue center they feared would blow away. Now, they're asking the state for help to build a new facility. Full Story
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People can die when small rural pipelines called "gathering lines" explode. But after decades of talk among industry representatives and regulators, the death of a little girl in Texas serves as a reminder that there are still no rules. Full Story
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A new study by The Nature Conservancy and Texas A&M University says it's more cost effective to buy out homes in clusters instead of an uncoordinated, checkerboard approach. Full Story
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The Environmental Defense Fund concluded that oil producers burned off more natural gas than they reported to the state. But Texas officials expressed skepticism of those findings during a state Senate hearing Wednesday. Full Story
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The state has been waiting a year for the federal government to set rules for how $4.3 billion in disaster recovery grants can be spent. Full Story
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An analysis by the research arm of Environment Texas found that 275 companies across the state reported emitting 63 million pounds of hazardous and climate-warming pollutants from their facilities in 2017. Full Story
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In 1993, the Legislature passed a law that said state parks and historic sites could receive all of the money generated by a tax on the sale of sporting goods. Since then, state lawmakers have given the parks department only about 40 percent of those collections. Full Story
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An analysis of government satellite data by the Environmental Defense Fund shows that the amount of natural gas that energy companies burned off in 2017 is twice as high as what they reported to state regulators. Full Story
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State Sen. Charles Perry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Water and Rural Affairs, has a package of bills that could create Texas' first statewide flood plan. He says coastal Texans aren't the only ones at risk of property loss. Full Story
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Analyzing groundwater monitoring data that power companies are now required to report to the federal government, the Environmental Integrity Project found that groundwater under 16 Texas coal plants had unsafe levels of contaminants including arsenic. The pollution is linked to disposal pits for spent coal. Full Story
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Our series on the global implications of a new golden age for Permian Basin oil began with a very local story: How towns large and small are trying to deal with an explosion in drilling activity, population, traffic and other effects of the new boom. Full Story
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As American natural gas production soars, South Korea rushes to build tankers to move that energy to Asia’s top economies. Full Story
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The Texas Tribune produced several deep-dive investigations in 2018 that examined various issues that affect Texans across the state. Here's a look at some of those standout projects. Full Story
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