A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky.
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NWS infestations were discovered just days apart on calves that grazed roughly 5.6 miles from each another. (Photo via Hoosier Ag News)
Despite ongoing efforts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Mexican government and on-the-ground teams along the U.S.-Mexico border, last week the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed two cases of New World screwworm in Texas livestock, reports Jennifer Carrico of Progressive Farmer. In both cases, the flesh-eating blowfly larvae were discovered in young calves about 6 miles apart in Zavala County, Texas.
After the second case was confirmed, Texas Governor Greg Abbott "issued an updated statewide disaster declaration for the NWS infestation," Carrico writes. At a news conference, Abbott encouraged the use of "all state resources to combat the NWS." Additionally, the executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, Budd Dinges, reminded the public that NWS isn't a threat to consumer food safety but rather poses a threat to livestock production.
In response to the infestations, APHIS has "deployed mobile response trailers, and sterile fly releases are underway with 2 million aerially and 4 million released on the ground per week," Farm Journal reports. "Movement control zones have been activated at a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) radius around each site."
Both NWS cases were found in Zavala, Texas, in red above. (Wikipedia map)
The discovery prompted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to place "temporary restrictions on livestock imports from Texas," reports C.J. Miller of Hoosier Ag Today. "Under the order, cattle, horses and other livestock that originated in Texas or were present in the state within 21 days before entering Canada will be denied entry."
Although the USDA intensified its battle to prevent the NWS from reentering the U.S. including banning Mexican livestock from entering the U.S. beginning in July 2025, some ranchers don't think the government's response was enough.
"On Friday, about 100 ranchers in mud-splattered boots and cowboy hats packed a small high school cafeteria for a Texas Animal Health Commission briefing on screwworm, peppering officials with questions and venting frustration over what they saw as a slow federal response,” reports Heather Schlitz of Reuters.
Even as the USDA works to contain NWS infestations, they are likely to spread throughout the summer months, Miller reports. Prior to last week, the NWS hasn't been found in the U.S. for at least 60 years.
Reeds and mesquite trees line the banks of the Rio Grande River as it flows through the western Texas region known as Big Bend. Residents of this rural area are deeply worried about the Trump administration's use of eminent domain to proceed with a controversial "border barrier" that will include 30-foot tall steel border walls, Carlos Morales reports for NPR.
Big Bend's rough terrain makes it a less popular place to illegally cross into the U.S. (Texas Almanac map)
For Joe Pineda, who ranches along the river in Redford, Texas, that may mean selling or losing land that has been in his family since the late 1800s. Morales writes, "Pineda received a letter from the federal government warning of eminent domain proceedings if they don't agree to sell the land or voluntarily give access for border wall construction."
Pineda is not alone; many Big Bend community members are alarmed by the private property the federal government wants to use and the disruptive elements such as patrol roads, flood lighting and surveillance systems that the government will include in its border barrier project.
Unlike many partisan issues today, the push against a border build-up in Big Bend has "united an unusual coalition of people across the political spectrum who say a wall is not needed here," Morales reports. "They worry about threats to the environment and Indigenous sites, to impact on the region's famously dark skies and on wild animals, like Black bears, bobcats and bighorn sheep."
Big Bend businesses are also worried about what the border barrier will do to the region's growing tourism economy, which brings in roughly $56 million a year, according to Morales.
Sunset at Big Bend National Park in Texas. (Photo by Caleb Fisher, Unsplash)
Many residents point to the area's rugged terrain as a reason fewer illegal crossings are attempted in the region. In short, a wall isn't needed in Big Bend. Morales adds, "In the first three months of this year, Customs and Border Protection's Big Bend Sector saw 498 apprehensions, which is just over a tenth of the apprehensions made in Texas' busiest sector."
Big Bend residents also say there's a better way to spend taxpayer money. Morales explains, "The price tag for a single mile of border barrier is over $17 million." Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, who grew up in the region, told Morales, "We agree with border security. We agree there needs to be walls ... but not here. We just need to be monitored, we need the manpower, and I think we'd be very fine."
Meanwhile, some property owners are adamant that the region be left alone. Morales adds, "They say they're willing to do whatever it takes, including filing their own lawsuits against the government, to stop the build-up at the border."
The Davis Mountain Clinic offers an exam room for patients. (Photo by Carol Brewer, Daily Yonder)
In the midst of rural West Texas, a shipping container is
giving residents of Jeff Davis County access to telehealth through reliable
connectivity and a local registered nurse, reports Madeline de Figueiredo for
the Daily Yonder.
The Davis Mountain Clinic was created by Texas A&M and Texas
Tech universities to bring remote medical and mental health care to the area’s
aging population, explains Figueiredo.
One in five residents in this mountainous county don’t have
reliable broadband, and the only doctor is semi-retired, causing most of the
population to drive 30 minutes for care, Figueiredo reports.
As the county has a median age of 58, the telehealth hub offers
not just reliable broadband, but “digital literacy for older residents, trusted
community health workers, and practical ways for clinicians to weave virtual
visits into everyday care.”
The director and local registered nurse for the clinic,
Carol Brewer, can monitor vital signs, execute physical exams and help patients
navigate their virtual telehealth appointments. She
told the Yonder, "The advantage is, when they
come here to see the doctor, I manage the technology on my end, they don’t have
to deal with that at all…I’m the hands of the physician via telehealth.”
This is not the only area of Texas that struggles with
internet connectivity and access to nearby health care. Communities in Erath,
Hockley and Reeves counties are working on bridging the gap in services by
offering private telehealth rooms, medical monitoring equipment and guidance
from staff through local libraries, Figueiredo reports.
Graph by The Daily Yonder, from New York Times data
Texas election primaries last week drew a big turnout, with a surprising number of rural voters showing up at the polls. "Texas primary voters turned out in striking numbers this week, with early voting fueling a surge that dominated state headlines," reports Madeline de Figueiredo of The Daily Yonder. "Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, a greater share of rural voters cast their ballots in the Texas primaries this year."
Both parties had dramatic challenges for seats that will be highly competitive in the November elections. De Figueiredo writes, "Major outlets reportedrecord-breaking Democratic participation in a closely-watched Senate showdown between U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett and State Representative James Talarico."
Republican voters had a hard time choosing between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Since neither Cornyn nor Paxton received a majority, their contest moves to a runoff in May.
Amid the surge in voter engagement, rural counties led the charge. "About 26% of registered rural voters showed up to the polls on Tuesday, the highest turnout rate among all county types," the Yonder reports. "The majority of votes were cast in the Democratic primary, the first time this has occurred since the 2020 presidential primary."
The number of ballots cast across the Lone Star State in the primaries increased "47% compared to the last midterm elections in 2022," de Figueiredo writes.
Although suburban and urban voters posted the largest gains in voter turnout, rural counties still "posted the highest turnout percentage among all county types," the Yonder reports.
Energized voting bases and increased population were both cited as reasons for the increase in voter turnout.
Part of a ginning business stands out on High Plains of West Texas. (Floydada Co-op Gin photo)
A farm recession doesn't look like a Wall Street crash. It's quieter, deeper and far more difficult for an agriculturally-based community to recover from, writes Tony St. James in his opinion for RED TV. When a region's farms go under, their disappearance is followed by the loss of "the businesses that once processed, serviced, and supported the crop."
West Texas cotton gins that once flourished and pumped millions of dollars into the state's economy are struggling to survive drought and market volatility. "In 2022, extreme drought forced producers to abandon nearly 74% of planted acres, driving production to the lowest levels seen in decades," St. James explains. While production rebounded in 2023, the farm losses of 2022 were nearly impossible to balance.
After 2022, some farmers had to sell or close their gins. Their consolidation into another gin or complete closings cascaded down to all the equipment dealers, irrigation companies and trucking firms that depended on that gin for work and profits.
Location of Parmer County, Texas, population 9,870 (Wikipedia map)
"In Parmer County, one cooperative gin has sold, another is unlikely to reopen, and only one large facility remains," St. James writes. "The cotton did not disappear. The infrastructure did. . . . This is what a farm recession looks like on Main Street."
From a state or national perspective, the loss and absorption of gins may not signal any crisis, but for towns centered on cotton, the loss of one or two gins can kill their rural economy.
"Cotton remains central to the Texas economy. . . . But rural infrastructure tends to thin faster than it rebuilds," St. James adds. To survive, some West Texas counties are faced with "rebuilding the backbone of the local economy."
Brahman cows graze near Mercedes, Texas, about 11 miles from the Mexico border. (Photo by J. Carrico, Farm Journal)
After a few months of reduced sightings, the New World Screwworm is making news again. "Mexican authorities confirmed an NWS case in a seven-year-old bovine and a 6-day-old calf both on Jan. 5," reports Jennifer Carrico of Progressive Farmer. Both infected animals were less than 220 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Mexican authorities, NWS has inched closer to the Texas border. The parasite has spread north even as Mexico has strictly limited cattle movement across the country.
Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller told Carrico, "The screwworm now may be moving closer on its own, with no apparent link to commercial animal movement. Texas producers must act now -- stay informed, stay vigilant, and prepare immediately. We cannot drop our guard for even a moment."
NWS flesh-eating larvae can be deadly to cattle and other warm-blooded animals, including sheep, horses and dogs. Female NWS deposit their eggs in an animal's open wound, and once the larvae hatch, they eat away at the host's flesh, which can cause infection and decay. "The larvae can kill an animal in just four to seven days if not quickly detected and treated," reports Stump Denton of Farm Journal.
Since female NWS mate only once in a lifetime and store their fertilized eggs, releasing millions of sterile male NWS has been the best way to eradicate harmful larvae production. Carrico explains, "The USDA eradicated NWS from the United States in 1966 using the sterile insect technique, and it was used successfully again in 2016 in the southern Florida Keys when found in deer."
A sterile fly distribution facility at Moore Airbase in Edinburg, Texas, is expected to be up and running early this year.
Map from SmokyMountains.com shows fall leaf color projections. Red indicates peak color.
As autumn begins across much of the U.S., many Americans and tourists plan day trips or vacations to take in nature’s stunning fall colors. "Parts of the U.S. will soon start to see — if they haven't already — leaves and shrubs trade their green hues for vibrant shades of orange, yellow and red as the days get shorter and temperatures get chillier," reports Rachel Treisman of NPR. Explore Fall, TheSmokyMountains.com and Almanac websites offer some of the best "estimates [for] when leaves will change and colors will peak across the country."
Faced with ongoing population growth, an aging water system, and intermittent droughts paired with scorching temperatures, Texas officials and lawmakers are working to address the state's water crisis. But even as solutions are hammered out in Austin, the "state's regional diversity and patchwork of governments complicate matters further," reportsThe Texas Tribune. "Texas voters will be asked this fall to approve a $20 billion package to protect the state’s water supply. . . . The $20 billion is just a fraction of what some experts believe the state needs to invest going forward."
In a bid to help balance pharmacy payments, Optum Rx "has increased reimbursement minimums for brand drugs for approximately 2,300 independent pharmacies," reports Heather Landi of Fierce Healthcare. The company's shift to a cost-based model is helping the bottom line of the "more than 24,000 independent and community pharmacies it works with. . ." More than half of all independent pharmacies operate in rural areas of the U.S., but many have closed or struggle to stay afloat due to high operational costs and low reimbursement rates.
When it comes to remembering 2020, many Americans would probably prefer not to recall the year at all. But film director Ari Aster doesn't want anyone to forget. In his latest film, "Eddington," Aster takes viewers back to the early days of the pandemic through the lens of a rural town drama set between a town sheriff and its mayor. Eddington captures the "anxiety, confusion, listlessness, and frustration of those first few months of lockdown as the backdrop for a dark and twisted story of a man, a town, and a country gone crazy," writes Anya Petrone Slepyan of The Daily Yonder. "Ari Aster’s latest rural thriller will give you something to think about."
When individuals suffering from opioid addictions are released from jail or prison, they face a high risk of overdose; however, a recent study shows that medication treatment during incarceration can lower their chances of overdosing upon release. "Use of medication for opioid use disorder (OUD) in jail was strongly associated with lower risks for overdose, death, and re-incarceration after release into the community," reports Shannon Firth of MedPage Today. The observational study was conducted in Massachusetts correctional facilities.
No matter where adults live, it may seem like kids have a different language that includes words that don't mean what they meant even three years ago. Keeping up with what young people are saying can feel impossible for anyone attempting to stay "hip," but not knowing kid-jargon can be a particular nightmare for parents. "As a little bit of an explainer, here’s a quick guide to slang terms that have made a mark in recent months," writes Paul Anthony Jones for Mental Floss. A few "explainers" are shared below.
Kid-jargon can mystify adults. (Graphic by Justin Dodd, Mental Floss)
W in the chat! "W has been used as a slang abbreviation for a win for over 50 years — although nowadays it’s used not just of victories, but of anything that could be regarded as laudable or impressive."
What the sigma?!? "As Merriam-Webster has noted, [the word] sigma has become increasingly ironic, pejorative, and jokey. . . This phrase in Gen Z and Gen Alpha vernacular is roughly the 2020s equivalent of 'What the heck?!'"
Do it for the plot! "If you imagine your life as one big movie, 'doing something for the plot' means doing something bold or risky that, in the retelling of your life story, would act as a major plot point."
A sterile male screwworm fly is numbered to study fly dispersal. (USDA photo via PBS)
Despite focused efforts to prevent the flesh-eating New World screwworm parasite from entering the U.S., a human case of screwworm was confirmed on Sunday. The parasite was "detected in a person in Maryland who returned to the U.S. after traveling to El Salvador, according to the Department of Health and Human Services," reports Rebecca Falconer of Axios.
While the HHS does not consider screwworms a significant threat to humans, American livestock farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are preparing for the parasite. Cassandra Garrison, Tom Polansek and Leah Douglas of Reutersreport, "Industry cattle ranchers, beef producers and livestock traders [are] already on high alert for potential U.S. infestations as screwworm has moved northward from Central America and southern Mexico."
Since November, the USDA has worked with Mexico to contain the aggressive parasite from nearing the U.S.-Mexico border, including closing cattle trade ports and having massive sterile fly releases. Last week, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans to build a sterile fly facility in Texas to combat screwworm infestations.
Most experts believe that Texas is the most likely place for screwworms to enter the country. Reuters reports, "The USDA has estimated a screwworm outbreak could cost the economy in Texas, the biggest U.S. cattle-producing state, about $1.8 billion in livestock deaths, labor costs and medication expenses."
For a more in-depth explanation of screwworms, click here.
Screwworm infestations eat their living host's flesh. They are painful and can be deadly. (Adobe Stock photo)
In an effort to combat the threat parasitic screwworms pose to U.S. livestock and wildlife near the U.S.-Mexico border, the Department of Agriculture announced it will "spend up to $750 million to build a facility in Texas that produces sterile flies to fight the flesh-eating livestock pest," report Tom Polansek and Leah Douglas of Reuters. The production plant will be built in Edinburg, Texas, at Moore Air Base.
USDA scientists and agricultural partners have been working diligently with Mexican authorities to push the blowfly and its flesh-eating larvae southward; however, the newly announced facility signals that those efforts may not be enough to protect U.S. cattle. Texas ranchers are "anticipating the return of screwworm for the first time in decades," Reuters reports. "The U.S. eliminated screwworm in the 20th century by flying planes over hotspots to drop boxes packed with sterile flies."
The new facility is expected to "produce 300 million sterile screwworm flies per week, according to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins," Polansek and Douglas write. Mass numbers of sterile male blowflies work to create a buffer by out-competing the fertile male flies. Female blowflies only mate once, so when they mate with a sterile male blowfly, no screwworms can be produced.
Rollins previously predicted that "such a facility would take two to three years to build," Reuters reports. During the facility's construction, the "USDA will spend another $100 million on technologies to combat screwworm. . . and hire more mounted officers to patrol the border for infested wildlife. . . The USDA has also invested in a sterile fly production plant in Mexico that is slated to open next year."
Should screwworms return to the U.S., they could devastate the cattle industry. Polansek and Douglas explain, "An outbreak could further elevate record-high U.S. beef prices by reducing the U.S. cattle supply. Rollins told Reuters, "All Americans should be concerned."
The violent waters of the Guadalupe River flipped this motor home. (Photo by Sergio MartÃnez-Beltrán, NPR)
The fatal July 4th flooding in central Texas has led to questions over whether staffing cuts at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contributed to the tragedy, which left more than 100 people dead. "The floods occurred along Texas’s Guadalupe River, roughly an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio," reports Miriam Waldvogel of The Hill.
"The Austin/San Antonio Weather Service office’s warning coordination meteorologist, who organizes alerting the outside world about agency forecasts, took a Trump administration buyout in April," reports Rachel Frazin of The Hill.
Rick Spinrad, who headed NOAA during the previous administration, "pointed to the absence of a warning coordination meteorologist," Frazin writes. Spinrad told her, "Information went out with significant lead time of several hours, and yet no action was taken. . . . In the weather forecast offices, the one who follows up with that is the position called the warning coordination meteorologist. And guess what, there is no WCM in the San Antonio/Austin weather forecast office, because that’s one of the positions that was lost in the cuts. . ."
A NWS spokesperson told The Hill that the Austin/San Antonio office and the San Angelo office "had additional forecasters on duty during the catastrophic flooding event in Texas’s Hill Country during the July 4 holiday weekend."
While Democrats want NWS cuts scrutinized for the part they may have played in the catastrophe, "President Trump said staffing cuts didn’t impact the handling of the incident," Frazin reports. Trump told reporters, "That was really the Biden set-up … but I wouldn’t blame Biden for it, either. . . . This is a hundred-year catastrophe, and it’s just so horrible to watch."
Trump will be in central Texas today, although "it’s not clear yet where he will visit," Waldvogel reports. "The deadly flash floods [swept through] Kerrville, Ingram, and Hunt, along with summer camps including Camp Mystic."
Co-owner Max Kabat keeps the cafe stocked with Big Bend Sentinel newspapers. (CBS video clip)
Like many rural newspapers in towns off the beaten path, The Big Bend Sentinel didn't make a lot of money. But that didn't make it any less important. The paper had been serving up local news for tiny Marfa, Texas, in far west Presidio County, for nearly a century.
When the Sentinel's owners decided to sell the paper, they were lucky and smart. "Maisie Crow and Max Kabat had moved to Marfa from New York City in 2016 in search of community," reports Janet Shamlian of CBS News. "Then, in 2019, the paper's owners approached them about buying it. They said they had never considered it before." Kabat told her, "A newspaper found us. We didn't go and search out to find the newspaper."
Crow had worked with local news outlets as a documentary filmmaker, and both she and Kabat knew how unforgiving the newspaper business could be. Shamlian reports, "The couple knew it would be tough to keep the paper afloat without another source of revenue. That's when they became unlikely restaurateurs."
Location of Presidio County, TX (Wikipedia map)
The couple opened a cafe to add revenue to support their newspaper's bottom line. Crow openly admits that the coffee shop is the biggest money maker. She told Shamlian, "I don't think it would surprise anyone that the large majority of the revenue comes from the coffee shop, the restaurant, and the home goods that we sell."
When Crow and Kabat took over the Sentinel, it had four employees. It now has nearly 20. Shamlian adds, "It's one of Marfa's biggest employers."
Despite its small size, the town is a tourist location, which helps the business, but it's the local support that keeps the paper going. Presidio County Attorney Blair Park told CBS News, "The other news outlets [are] not really concerned about what's going on in Marfa. So if it wasn't for this newspaper, we wouldn't be seeing our local, community news anywhere."
A vodcast and story about The Big Bend Sentinel appears in Editor & Publisher. Watch it here.
At 98 years old, Opal Lee is still spreading a message of patience and love. (Photo by Shayan Asgharnia, TX Monthly)
As a child, she went to school and spent her summers working near Texarkana. Her first job was taking care of the slop jars. As an adult, she raised four children, paid for her college education, and became a teacher.
But at age 89, she set a goal. That goal would send her walking and talking to all sorts of people. She even met with U.S. presidents. And in 2021, she became the "grandmother of Juneteenth," reports Hanif Abdurraqib for Texas Monthly. But Opal Lee isn't finished. At 98 years old, she still believes she has work to do.
The story of why Opal Lee decided to make Juneteenth her life's legacy began in Marshall, Texas, when she was 12 years old. Her family bought a house "on East Annie Street in the Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth," Abdurraqib writes. "On the night of June 19, 1939, a white mob gathered, demanding that the family leave. Lee and her brothers took refuge at a friend’s house a few blocks away while her parents fled under cover of darkness. The mob trashed the home and set it on fire."
When Lee watched President Joe Biden sign Juneteenth into a federal holiday, some might say her work was finished. Abdurraqib explains, "She had actually done the thing she’d set out to do. She’d taken an inciting moment of rage and grief and dedicated her life to healing the wound it had created. … But Lee, who has lived through, endured, and fought for so much … has something unique to offer in an era of renewed crisis."
Lee's tenacity and spirit have led her to change many lives, but her advice is simple: Patience. "The road is long, and you travel on it because the alternative is untenable," Abdurraqib writes. "And you do whatever you can along the way, and you hope some people will maybe join you."
Lee's travels brought her home. She lives in a house built on her family's East Annie Street plot. Abdurraqib adds, "On the front door is a purple wreath. In the center of the wreath is a quote from Lee herself: 'If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love.'"
Lee's background in Texas meant she was introduced to Juneteenth celebrations early in life. It was part of the region's culture. Once the day became a national holiday, its celebrations and somber remembrances joined together to make the day especially meaningful for black Americans. PBS offers a "beginners guide" for Juneteenth here.
Measles is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus. (Adobe Stock photo)
As the number of diagnosed cases of measles continues to climb, the outbreak in rural west Texas has exposed a health care system that is unprepared to handle even a smaller-scale contagion, reports Pooja Salhotra of The Texas Tribune. "Aging infrastructure, a dearth of primary care providers and long distances between testing sites and laboratories plague much of rural Texas, where the measles outbreak has concentrated."
A few years back, rural Texas was ravaged by Covid infections. Like Covid, the recent measles outbreak is "revealing how a lack of public health resources leaves rural communities vulnerable," Salhotra explains. "What’s left are local leaders forced to scrape together the few tools they have to respond to an emergency, contending with years of lackluster investment from the state and federal level to proactively prevent emerging public health threats."
A lack of hospitals, physicians and dilapidated facilities are just some of rural Texas' health care woes. "Some 64 Texas counties don’t have a hospital, and 25 lack primary care physicians," Salhotra reports. "Swaths of Texas have scant resources for public awareness campaigns. And they lack sufficient medical staff with expertise to provide the one-on-one education needed to encourage vaccination and regular visits to the doctor."
To slow the spread of measles, "rural health care teams have cordoned off spaces to conduct measles testing," Salhotra writes. They've "used social media to blast residents with information about vaccination efficacy and schlepped throat swabs across counties to ship them to a state lab in Austin — the only public state facility that was conducting measles testing until the Texas Tech University Bioterrorism Response Laboratory, part of a national network of CDC-funded labs, began measles testing" recently.
The primary goal of public health is prevention; however, "it’s emergencies that spur the most action, particularly in rural communities," Salhotra explains. "It was only after a school-aged child died from measles that state and federal support intensified."
Currently, Texas "spends less on public health per person than the vast majority of other states, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, whose analysis shows Texas spent $17 per person on public health in 2023. A decade earlier, the spend was $19," Salhotra reports. "The low levels of state funding particularly hurt rural communities that have higher rates of uninsured Texans and more senior citizens with greater health needs."
Heavy smoke crossing a road on the Smokehouse Creek Fire on Feb. 27, 2024. (Wikipedia photo)
It has been a year since the Smokehouse Fire burned millions of acres across the Texas Panhandle. The blaze took the lives of three people, killed thousands of cattle and left a trail of scorched earth that was once bucolic lands.
In Canadian, Texas, a town of 2,300 residents in the Panhandle's northeast corner, where the fire decimated thousands of acres, residents are still working through the disaster's trauma and what the town's future might look like, reports Jayme Lozano Carver of The Texas Tribune. "As resilient as Canadians are, they are coping through trauma — and have been for a long time. The latest fire challenged residents to once again find a way to recover — mentally, physically, and financially."
Wendie Cook, a Canadian council member, told Carver, "It feels as if there’s a shadow. We all know it’s coming. Some days it’s just harder to take in than others.” Carver adds, "It’s difficult to focus on the future when you’re haunted by the past. Black scorch marks cover the splintered trees for miles. . . .Bundles of melted chairs and broken glass are scattered outside what was a community center."
Most of the time when communities are hit by natural disasters, they can begin clean-up and recovery processes immediately. That's not an option for Canadians. Carver explains, "Visitors can't go to Lake Marvin Lodge, a community center that once sat in the Black Kettle National Grasslands Park. The damage from the fire hasn’t been cleaned up. . . . It’s federal property, and local officials are not allowed to rehabilitate it."
Even as life goes on, it isn't the same Canadian. It was "business as usual two weeks ahead of the one-year anniversary of the wildfires," Carver writes. "Ranchers in the Panhandle were getting ready for the annual bull sale. . . There were about 217 people there, but a big portion of the usual customers were absent. James Henderson, a Memphis rancher told Carver, "Our customers lost a lot. So they weren’t here to buy bulls. They don’t need bulls, they don’t have any fences.”
A Permian wellhead surrounded by fracking equipment. (Adobe Stock photo)
Taking fracking wastewater and injecting it miles underground is the cheapest and most common way to get rid of Texas oilfield used or "produced water," but a new study from Southern Methodist University found that the toxic water may not be staying underground. The study showed "a significant link between wastewater injection and oil well blowouts in the Permian Basin," report Dylan Baddour of Inside Climate News and Carlos Nogueras Ramos of the Texas Tribune. "It’s the first scientific proof of a phenomenon local landowners have long warned was occurring."
To study wastewater injections and blowouts, researchers "examined a
January 2022 blowout in Crane County that gushed almost 15 million
gallons of brine before it was capped, according to the paper. That
would fill about 23 Olympic-sized swimming pools," Baddour and Ramos
report. "The study traced the cause of the blowout to a cluster of nine
injection wells about 12 miles to the northeast."
The connection between the Permian Basin's briny sprays and fracking wastewater "raises concerns about the possibility of widespread groundwater contamination in West Texas," Baddour and Ramos write. While the Texas Railroad Commission regulates the oil and gas extraction, it has "refrained from putting forth an explanation. . . . The link between injections and surface blowouts has remained unconfirmed, despite widespread suspicions." This recent study, which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, "marks a big step forward in scientific documentation."
Attorney Sarah Stogner told Baddour and Ramos, "It just validates what we’ve been saying." Baddour and Ramos add, "For the last three years, Stogner has represented the Antina Cattle Ranch, where dozens of abandoned oil wells have been spraying back to life. Stogner persistently alleged that nearby wastewater injection was responsible. But she couldn’t prove it. . . . Now a scientific consensus is beginning to fall in behind her."
When old wells gush oil wastewater, the land that absorbs the salty mess is at risk. Baddour and Ramos explain, "West Texas ranchers who own land where contaminated water is seeping from underground are beginning to worry it will soon become uninhabitable. . . . Despite those problems, the Railroad Commission approved 400 new disposal wells in the Permian Basin alone in 2021, according to agency documents, and 480 in 2022."
To learn how fracking wastewater can contaminate groundwater, click here.
Migrants walk along concertina wire on the U.S. side of the border in Texas. (Photo by Paul Ratje, The New York Times)
Emergency workers and town officials in Eagle Pass, Texas, have been overwhelmed by the thousands of immigrants who require rescuing from Rio Grande River perils, heat exhaustion or the physical demands of wrangling with border obstacles, as they attempt to cross into the U.S., reports Edgar Sandoval of The New York Times. "This week, a delegation of 60 Republican congressmen, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, gathered in town at the edge of the Rio Grande to call for the Biden administration to stem the immigration surge."
Eagle Pass is home to a border patrol station, but the town is not equipped to handle the number of people crossing. "Many [immigrants] are in urgent need of medical attention when they arrive — help that is only available through a city that is already straining to meet the needs of its own 28,000 residents," Sandoval writes. "The city has had to assign one of its five ambulances full-time to transport injured migrants from the river's edge."
Eagle Pass, Texas (Wikipedia maps)
Meanwhile, the cost of aiding, treating and managing migrants is straining the town's fire department and law enforcement. The Fire Department is "spending about $150,000 a month on ambulance costs responding to migrants alone. . . .That figure does not include overtime, costing more than $30,000 a month, Sandoval reports. "The Eagle Pass police chief, Federico Garza, says his small police force of 74 officers is often diverted from everyday duties to respond to calls of migrants idling on a corner or crossing through a backyard. The sheer number of calls 'can be overwhelming,' he said."
Texas has "long been at the center of U.S. immigration policy," Sandoval adds. "But the area has turned into a key point of friction this year between Republican leaders and the Biden administration, as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas openly defied federal authority and set up state law enforcement patrols, concertina wire and floating buoys along the border in a bid to keep new migrants out of the state."
In January, the flow of immigrants into Eagle Pass slowed, but some of the efforts hurt the town's economy. "The recent closure of an international crossing known locally as Bridge 1 crippled a local economy that benefits from a steady stream of Mexicans who legally cross every day to eat at restaurants, fill their gas tanks and commute to work," Sandoval reports. "The closure over the holiday season cost the city about $1 million, Rolando Salinas Jr., the mayor of Eagle Pass, said."
The 21 people who died on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School. (Courtesy photos, the Families via ABC News, Reuters, AP)
It was May 24, 2022, when Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and began shooting his AR-15-style rifle into classrooms. In the first four minutes, Ramos fired over 100 rounds that echoed throughout the building.
Surviving teachers and students knew they were targets, and instinctively followed their live-shooter training protocols. "They dropped to the floor, crouching under desks and countertops, far from the windows. . . . A few grabbed bloodied phones and dialed 911. . . . And as students across the country have been instructed for years, they remained quiet, impossibly quiet. . . and waited, report Lomi Kriel, Lexi Churchill and Jinitzail Hernández, co-authors from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Responding to 911 calls, "Hundreds of law enforcement officers descended on Robb Elementary School. They, too, waited. They waited for someone, anyone, to tell them what to do."
Once in the school, law enforcement waited for more than an hour to act. "They waited for the right keys and specialized equipment to open doors. They waited out of fear that the lack of ballistic shields and flash-bangs would leave them vulnerable against the power of an AR-15-style rifle. Most astonishingly, they waited for the children's cries to confirm that people were still alive inside the classrooms," according to the report. In total, 376 law enforcement officers responded, according to an investigation from the Texas House of Representatives.
After an exhaustive number of investigative interviews, listening, and watching hundreds of hours of video and body camera footage, the reporters from ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and Frontline came to a conclusion. They write: "The children in Uvalde were prepared, dutifully following what they had learned during active shooter drills, even as their friends and teachers were bleeding to death. Many officers, who had trained at least once during their careers for such a situation, were not."
America has become a country where "mass shootings have become a fact of life, with at least 120 since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting," they write. "Debates often erupt along partisan lines as anguished communities demand change. . . . One thing that seemingly unites all sides is the notion of better training for law enforcement. But, in actuality, few laws exist requiring such instruction. . . . A nationwide analysis by the news organizations shows states require far more training to prepare students and teachers for a mass shooting than they do for the police who are expected to protect them."
Chart by Paul Horn, ICN, from Energy Information Admin. data
Some people say "Everything is bigger in Texas," and that sentiment rings true in the case of a subject that some may find surprising, given the state's fossil-fuel heritage: clean energy.
"A new batch of data about the country's electricity generation shows the increasing dominance of one state as the clean-energy leader . . . Texas," reports Dan Gearino of Inside Climate News. "Texas has produced more gigawatt-hours of electricity from renewable sources than any other state. . . . thanks largely to wind energy. Now, the state is expanding its lead by continuing to be the county's leader in wind energy. . . and is quickly closing the gap on California on utility-scale solar power."
Texas' dominance is partly a function of its size, but it already generates more than twice as much power from wind and solar as California, and "more than either New York or Ohio generated from all electricity sources," Gearino notes. "But Texas is also the country's leader in overall electricity generation, and it's the leader in generation from gas and coal, so the total for wind and solar, while gigantic, was just 34.3 percent of the total from all sources."
If you add up "all carbon-free electricity sources, which includes renewables and nuclear., the leader, again, is Texas, with 180,145 gigawatt-hours, followed by Illinois with 124,055 gigawatt-hours, most of it from nuclear," Gearino reports. Just about any way you slice the numbers, Texas is on top."
Chart by Paul Horn, ICN, from Energy Information Admin. data
"Texas has the best combination of wind and solar resources in the U.S.," said Eric Gimon, a senior fellow at the think tank Energy Innovation in San Francisco, told Gearino. He adds, "By that, he means the state has high winds and bright sun. . . . But Texas is more than just resource-rich. It also has vast amounts of developable land and a regulatory system that is friendly to renewable energy developers, Gimon said."
The state's renewable-energy dominance is somewhat surprising because politically, its "leadership is closely tied to fossil-fuel industries and has been hostile to cleaner options."
Doug Lewin, president of Stoic Energy, a clean energy consulting firm, told Gearino that other states "are scrambling to attract this kind of investment. And here, Texas has some subset of policymakers that seem hell-bent on slowing it down."
"But this sentiment is more pervasive in politics than it is in the business community, Lewin said. Some of Texas' largest oil and gas companies are also investing in renewable energy," Gearino reports. Lewin told him, "It doesn't look like as much of a cage match as some people in the Capitol think it is."
Larry McMurtry posed for Dallas Morning News photographer David Woo in 2012 as he disposed of two-thirds his collection of half a million books, which filled several store buildings in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.
Larry McMurtry, "whose novels about small-town life and the cowboy era of the American West chiseled him into the folklore of his native Texas," died Thursday night at 84, the Dallas Morning Newsreports.
"McMurtry shaped Texas’ view of itself far more than any contemporary writer," writes Michael Granberry. "None
achieved his level of critical acclaim or rivaled his Hollywood success, as he simultaneously shattered and celebrated the mythology of
his native state."
Lonesome Dove, which Granberry calls "an elegiac study of the Old West," won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He wrote 45 other books, including The Last Picture Show,Terms of Endearment and Brokeback Mountain, novels that became Oscar-winning movies. He shared an Oscar for adapted screenplay for Brokeback. with Diana Ossana, his partner in writing and much of his life.
Google map
McMurtry grew up the son of a rancher in Archer City, which became the setting for The Last Picture Show. His first novel, Horseman, Pass By, was reworked to become the multiple-Oscar-winning movie Hud, starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal.
“Larry is someone who took on the stereotypes and busted them. He was willing to say that the cowboy myth was just that,” his friend, retired University of North Texas writer-in-residence George Getschow, told the Morning News. “He wrote about things that disturbed and challenged
convention in a way that was piercing, indelicate and right on.”
The New York Times' Dwight Garner notes, "For two years in the early 1990s he was American president of PEN, the august literary and human rights organization. He was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, where he often wrote on topics relating to the American West. . . . There was a comic brio in his best books, alongside an ever-present melancholy. He was praised for his ability to create memorable and credible female characters. . . . McMurtry had reportedly completed a draft of a memoir titled 62 Women, about some of the women he knew and admired. He had an unusual arrangement in the last years of his life. In 2011 he married Norma Faye Kesey, Ken Kesey’s widow, and she moved in with Mr. McMurtry and Ms. Ossana. “I went up and drug Faye out of Oregon,” he told Grantland.com. “I think I had seen Faye a total of four times over 51 years, and I married her. We never had a date or a conversation. Ken would never let me have conversations with her.”" He also leaves a son, James, "a well-regarded singer and songwriter."
A reduced version of the graphic that the Victoria Advocate ran with its story.
The Victoria Advocate in Texas has uncovered lax oversight of $2.1 million the county government spent with one contractor for Hurricane Harvey repairs at the local airport and other public properties.
Staff writer Jessica Preist’s reporting is a textbook example of local watchdog journalism that advances government transparency when elected officials fail to act in the best interest of taxpayers. Her story demonstrates how local newspapers can and should report on government financial procedures that often get buried as routine matters in public meetings where elected officials approve expenditures with little or no question.
That’s what Preist discovered when she looked into a contract awarded to The Virtus Group one month after the hurricane struck southeast Texas. The contract “did not include a scope of work nor did it set a cap on how much could be spent,” Preist wrote. Virtus did not have to compete for the contract because the Victoria County Commission declared an emergency to bypass a state law that requires a bidding process on projects of $50,000 or more.
“Some Victoria Airport commissioners first raised concerns about the Harvey spending at their June 27 meeting,” Preist wrote. “Those concerns led July 15 to a packed joint Victoria County Commission-Victoria Regional Airport Commission meeting, during which County Judge Ben Zeller and county commissioners Clint Ives, Kevin Janak and Danny Garcia defended the process.”
Only one of the county’s four commissioners, Gary Burns, questioned the approval process for payments to Virtus, but a business owner who often bids on county jobs also raised alarms. “It’s so far out in left field; it’s comical what they did over there,” John Clegg told the Advocate.
Following up on questions raised about the Virtus payments, the newspaper filed an open-records request for invoices, which showed the county issued six checks totaling about $2.1 million from Feb. 26, 2018, to April 22.
In Texas, a county with 10,200 or more residents must have a county auditor appointed by a local district judge to ensure independent oversight of public officials. The Advocate story included this from a pamphlet published by the Texas Association of County Auditors: “Both the county auditor and commissioners court are required, by law, to approve or reject claims for disbursement of county funds. . . . This system works, not because there is a county auditor and not because there is a commissioners court; it works because neither has creative or authoritative control over the other.”
Auditors have the power to tell elected county officials “no” to expenses, District Judge Stephen Williams explained to the newspaper. But as Preist’s reporting revealed, two previous auditors and the county treasurer all failed to provide proper oversight on the Virtus payments – and the current auditor apparently does not know she has the authority to deny approval of payments by the county.
The Victoria Advocate was established in 1846, making it the second oldest newspaper in Texas. The daily has been solely owned by the same family since 1961.
