accidental exposure
www.theadvocate.com
After explosion kills 14-year-old, Louisiana wants tighter safety rules on oil field tank batteries
The proposed safety changes in Louisiana come nearly 10 years after the U.S. Chemical Safety Board warned that oil batteries in rural areas posed a unique and dangerous attraction.
www.bayjournal.com
Bay scientists: Offshore oil drilling would put Chesapeake Bay at risk
Many fear a spill would be inevitable and could reach the Bay and its resources under the right conditions.
Chevron abandons plan to drill for oil in Great Australian Bight.
Chevron has become the second big oil company to abandon plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, almost exactly a year after BP ditched its more advanced plans for the untapped basin.
Chevron has become the second big oil company to abandon plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, almost exactly a year after BP ditched its more advanced plans for the untapped basin.
Oil companies have compared the potential of the bight to the Gulf of Mexico, where there are thousands of oil rigs.
But the push for fossil fuel exploitation of the region has come up against stiff opposition, since the bight also contains virtually pristine waters and is a vital breeding and feeding ground for many marine mammals, including 36 species of whales and dolphins.
Chevron had not submitted an environmental plan to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Agency). Before BP ditched its plans, its environmental plans were rejected by Nopsema three times, finding each time it failed to meet seven of eight requirements, including complying with relevant laws and demonstrating the environmental impacts would be acceptable.
Chevron said its decision had nothing to do with government policy, regulations, community or environmental concerns, but was purely commercial, blaming low oil prices and more competitive ventures off the coast of Western Australia.
The company indicated that its drilling licences could be sold to another party. Chevron Australia’s managing director, Nigel Hearne, said: “We are confident the Great Australian Bight can be developed safely and responsibly and we will work closely with the interested stakeholders to help realise its potential.”
After BP announced it was withdrawing from the bight, it said its licences would be transferred to its junior partner in the venture, Statoil. Statoil still plans to drill one exploration well before the end of 2019
BP is still paying more than half a million dollars a day for the drilling rig it had purpose-built for the Great Australian Bight to sit in standby mode.
The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said Chevron’s move was disappointing, since oil production in the bight would ease Australia’s reliance on imports.
But any oil produced would most likely be shipped to Asia owing to the lack of refining capability in Australia.
Environmentalists declared Chevron’s announcement a victory and called for Statoil and other companies with plans in the bight to follow suit.
“Chevron has worked out what BP realised when it withdrew from the Great Australian Bight a year ago almost to the day,” said Peter Owen, South Australia director of the Wilderness Society, which has been leading the campaign against drilling in the bight.
“BP’s decision showed that it’s too expensive to establish the significant and costly risk-management and clean-up capacity needed to protect our communities from the enormous spill risks associated with drilling in this part of the world,” he said.
“Statoil, Santos, Murphy and Karoon will face the same massive costs and increasing community opposition that BP and Chevron experienced. Statoil and others should quit the bight and leave the communities surrounding the bight in peace,” Owen said.
Sea Shepherd Australia’s managing director, Jeff Hansen, said: “We should not be expanding the fossil fuel industry into pristine treacherous seas where the risk of spills is far greater than we’ve seen before. A rapid transition away from this industry is our only hope for a liveable climate for our children.”
A Greenpeace Australia campaigner, Nathaniel Pelle, said: “The news Chevron has given up on drilling in the bight means the coastal communities of southern Australia have dodged another bullet, but the threat of Statoil still looms.
“Chevron’s announcement shows the only sane thing to do is for the federal government to terminate all oil leases in this area, reform our national oil regulations to world’s best practice, and move quickly to protect one of the world’s most biodiverse regions and the communities that surround it.”
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N.D. oil industry opposes state rule changes.
The North Dakota oil industry pushed back Wednesday on several proposed oil and gas rule changes, expressing strong opposition to a rule related to reporting small spills.
The North Dakota oil industry pushed back Wednesday on several proposed oil and gas rule changes, expressing strong opposition to a rule related to reporting small spills.
The Department of Mineral Resources is taking public input on potential administrative rules, including a proposal in response to the law change approved this year that no longer requires spills under 10 barrels to be reported.
The department now proposes requiring oil companies to file a document, known as a sundry notice, within 10 days after cleanup of any spill that was not reported. The notice would include details about the spill, such as the type of liquid and an explanation of how the spill volume was determined.
The North Dakota Petroleum Council, representing more than 500 companies, called the proposal a “backdoor reporting requirement” that goes far beyond what legislators intended.
The industry group also objected to a new proposed rule that would require a full environmental assessment at a well site if there was uncertainty about spills or possible contamination.
No landowners testified Wednesday at public hearings held in Bismarck and Dickinson. The Northwest Landowners Association, which opposed changing the spill-reporting requirement, is planning to testify in support of the sundry notice proposal at a hearing in Minot.
“It’s still our property, and we want to know about every spill,” Chairman Troy Coons has said.
The oil industry group also objected to proposed changes to royalty statements introduced in response to a growing frustration among royalty owners about deductions being taken from their payments.
The department proposes requiring companies to clearly identify the amount and purpose of each deduction or adjustment made to a royalty payment.
Brady Pelton, government affairs manager for the Petroleum Council, said the proposal will not provide meaningful information to royalty owners and will cost companies an estimated $500,000 to $1 million to develop the software necessary to comply.
“The burdens on operators in North Dakota resulting from these changes could conceivably make the state a less competitive environment in which to operate,” Pelton said.
Jim Starr, a royalty owner who traveled from Minneapolis to testify at the Bismarck hearing, said the rule change would be a “welcome first step.” But he cautioned that it won’t be effective unless there is a clear enforcement policy.
“I don’t know how any rule changes can be enforced without some teeth in it,” Starr said.
(Reach Amy Dalrymple at 701-250-8267 or Amy.Dalrymple@bismarcktribune.com)
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Everyone knew Houston’s reservoirs would flood — except for the people who bought homes inside them.
Despite concerns about flooding in and around the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, government officials prioritized development.
by Neena Satija, The Texas Tribune and Reveal, Kiah Collier, The Texas Tribune, and Al Shaw, ProPublica, October 12, 2017
When Jeremy Boutor moved to a master-planned community in Houston’s booming energy corridor, he saw it as idyllic.
Lakes on Eldridge boasted waterfalls, jogging trails and a clubhouse. It was upscale, secure and close to the office. A bus even picked up his two young sons in front of their house and took them to a nearby international school.
“This neighborhood was a paradise,” said Boutor, who moved to Houston from Paris two years ago after his employer, a French-based energy company, asked him to relocate.
Then, Hurricane Harvey changed everything.
As the downpours began and Boutor studied maps flashing on his TV screen, he realized that his home wasn’t at risk of flooding just because of record rainfall; it was also located inside one of two massive reservoirs that had been built west of Houston decades ago to protect the city.
Boutor ended up with more than a foot of water in his house and was forced to wade out of his home in knee-deep water with his 10-year-old son clinging to his back.
He and his neighbors are now coming to terms with the fact that in big enough rainstorms, their neighborhoods are actually designed to flood. And nobody told them about it.
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the two reservoirs known as Addicks and Barker on what was then mostly empty prairie, their chief goal was to protect the center of the city, 20 miles downstream.
The vast basins are dry most of the time, dotted with wooded parks and sports fields, and are contained on their western boundaries by large, earthen dams. During rainstorms, floodwater accumulates behind those dams in areas known as “flood pools” and backs up to the east; how far it goes depends on how big the rainstorm is and where it hits.
That system worked well when the reservoirs were surrounded by prairie and rice fields. But in recent decades, development has encroached from all sides. Today, about 14,000 homes are located inside them. During Harvey, when more floodwater accumulated behind the dams than ever before, 5,138 of those homes flooded.
Subdivisions built within the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs stayed flooded for days as the Army Corps of Engineers gradually released water down Buffalo Bayou.
Grand ParkwayAddicks ReservoirBarker ReservoirBuffalo BayouSubdivisions that contain homes within reservoirsThe Army Corps gradually released Harvey's floodwaters from Addicks and Barker down Buffalo Bayou to the GulfEdge of reservoirEdge of government-owned landBuffalo Bayou watershedTo Downtown Houston →
Some local government officials, like Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, say they’ve warned residents for years about the risks of living in or around the reservoirs during town halls and other public events.
“It is very difficult to make people believe the unbelievable,” Radack said. “No one ever believed the reservoirs would fill.”
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s top elected official, said residents must know they live in the reservoirs — the dams, he said, are right there.
“You’ve got a group that bought homes if not in, then on the very edge of reservoirs behind the dams, so that's pretty obvious,” Emmett said.
But it’s clear after Harvey that it wasn’t obvious to a lot of people. None of the more than half a dozen residents interviewed by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica after the floods say they knew they were living inside Addicks or Barker — many of their neighborhoods are several miles away from the dams.
Several local officials — including Houston’s “flood czar” and a neighboring county executive — said they had no idea the neighborhoods had been built inside the flood pools. Several real estate agents said they didn’t realize they were selling homes inside the pools.
“When I started to rent this house, nobody told me,” Boutor said. “Even the insurance company told me that it was not a flooding area.”
But critics say those officials and developers had to know they were putting people and property at risk.
“They had full knowledge. They knew exactly what they were doing,” said Phil Bedient, a professor of engineering at Rice University who studies flooding in the Houston area. “It’s a huge geopolitical mistake. How are they going to fix it?”
The question of who’s to blame has reignited long-simmering tensions between Harris County and the city of Houston.
In recent interviews, Emmett, the county judge, claimed that the city regulates development inside the reservoirs. But the city’s “flood czar,” Stephen Costello, called that “outrageous” and said the county plays a role, too.
Ultimately, all of them blame Congress. For more than a decade, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified a number of major needs for Addicks and Barker — including a comprehensive study of how development affects the reservoirs — but hasn’t gotten enough funding to address all the issues.
No matter whose fault it is, Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert — who has a portion of Barker Reservoir in his jurisdiction — said “you can’t take all that developed property off that land. It’s there. Whether it should have been allowed to be built the way it did ... that wasn’t on my watch.”
But now that the homes and streets are there — instead of the prairieland that used to absorb rainwater — scientists, along with Harris County and federal officials, say they are sending more runoff into the reservoirs during heavy storms. That means the reservoirs are getting fuller with each big rain event, threatening not just neighborhoods inside the reservoirs but the integrity of the earthen dams, too. The dams have been considered at risk of failure for years.
As Addicks and Barker reached historic levels during Harvey, the Army Corps sent an unprecedented torrent of floodwater downstream to ease the stress on dams. That caused thousands of additional homes to flood — homes that the reservoirs were initially built to protect.
Ed Taravella, a longtime Houston developer, said he hasn’t seen any credible studies showing that development has sent more runoff into the reservoirs. “Things people say are largely anecdotal,” he said.
Jeremy Boutor at his flood-damaged rental home in one of the neighborhoods flooded in Addicks Reservoir in Houston on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. (Michael Stravato/The Texas Tribune)
But scientists say the impact of replacing prairie with pavement is clear: More water ends up in the reservoirs, rather than being absorbed into the ground. The Army Corps has said as much for years.
“As development continues, we’re going to see more water coming to the reservoirs,” Richard Long, who oversees Addicks and Barker for the agency, told The Texas Tribune and ProPublica last year. “It means we have a harder job to do.”
Long added that the Army Corps doesn’t have the power to control development on land the agency doesn’t own.
“That would require the act of politicians, and they’ve chosen not to do it,” Long said.
For at least six years, the Army Corps has sought $3 million to study the risks that development poses to the reservoirs, but Congress hasn’t approved it — and no local government agreed to sponsor the study until recently. Last week, Texas officials asked Congress to provide $10 billion for a variety of Army Corps projects as part of Harvey recovery efforts.
The Army Corps is now referring media inquiries to the U.S. Department of Justice as it faces mounting lawsuits from residents who live upstream and downstream of the reservoirs. Some also are suing the city and county.
Local officials like Hebert said they never considered the possibility that the reservoirs would hold so much water — until Harvey set national records by dropping up to 50 inches of rain in parts of southeast Texas.
“To be perfectly honest with you, nobody had ever discussed with me the risk of inundation to the degree we had,” he said. “I was vaguely aware that if we got high enough, we could get water in those streets ... It was just something that was incomprehensible.”
He said he still considers it a “unique event” and doesn’t think it’s likely those homes will flood again any time soon.
Before Harvey, the neighborhoods inside the reservoirs had been some of the most desirable places to live in Houston. In Boutor’s subdivision, home prices range from $300,000 to $1.5 million.
But for Boutor, Lakes on Eldridge is not so desirable anymore.
“I don’t want to stay in this community,” he said. “I have to go far away from these reservoirs.”
“Nobody’s in charge”
It’s not clear when local officials became aware of the true risk of building homes within the reservoir basins. Alan Potok, who was assistant director of the Harris County Flood Control District until 2014, said that discussion began after some big floods in the 1990s that pushed water higher than ever before in the reservoirs.
The flooding didn’t reach neighborhoods, but “everybody knew it was going to happen” eventually, Potok said.
Potok pointed out that some of the subdivisions were built in the 1970s, before Harris County had floodplain maps. But many appeared more recently — even after officials recognized that the reservoirs had dodged a bullet during 2001’s Tropical Storm Allison.
Allison dropped almost 40 inches of rain in five days and devastated large areas of Houston — but luckily, district officials wrote in a 2003 report, most of the rain didn’t fall over the reservoirs, or “the damage could have been worse.”
“If the intense rainfall ... had occurred over Barker and Addicks Reservoirs, record flood heights exceeding previous records by five to eight feet would have occurred,” the report said.
The report estimated that as much as 2,000 acres of private land inside the reservoirs — much of it already filled with homes — would have flooded.
But nothing changed. At least 4,000 more homes have been built inside the reservoirs since Allison, according to a Tribune/ProPublica analysis of appraisal data.
Thousands of homes are wedged between government land and the maximum height of Addicks and Barker Reservoirs.
Army Corps of Engineers data shows subdivisions just beyond the edge of federal government land stayed flooded after Harvey’s rains. The maps at left, based on data from Sept. 16 after flood waters largely receded, show damaged subdivisions just beyond government-owned land. At right, those subdivisions on Sept. 3, days after Harvey's floodwaters filled reservoirs nearly to capacity.
Structure damaged in Harvey
Flooding on Sept. 16 Flooding on Sept. 3
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirTwin Lakes SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirTwin Lakes SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirLakes On Eldridge SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirLakes On Eldridge SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirKelliwood Greens SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
2000 ft.Edge of reservoirKelliwood Greens SubdivisionGovernment-owned land
By 2015, the flood control district had issued a warning in a new report that concluded: “Addicks Reservoir does not have the capacity to accept additional runoff anticipated from land development activities.”
That report went to both Harris County and the Texas Water Development Board. Still, development hasn’t stopped, although Harris County recently adopted slightly stronger flood mitigation rules in the area.
The finger-pointing over who allowed that development was going on long before Harvey. And there is certainly plenty of blame to go around.
You could start with the Army Corps, which bought only about 24,500 acres back when it built Addicks and Barker in the 1940s — even though the agency knew at the time that about 8,000 more acres could actually flood in a large enough rainstorm.
“There was only cattle, hay crops and a few rice crops out there at the time,” Long, the Army Corps’ reservoir overseer, said in 2016.
So if private property flooded, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
But Houston kept growing, from less than 400,000 people in 1940 to more than 2 million today. And the areas that had been intended for flood control — the reservoir basins and the fringes of Buffalo Bayou downstream — became desirable land for developers.
In an interview last year, Long said the Army Corps has little to no control over development and that its hands have been tied by local politicians and other factors — including the whims of various presidents and congresses with differing views on how much land the government should own and who controls the Army Corps budget.
If the agency could go back and start over, knowing what it knows now, “our battle lines would definitely be different,” he said.
Hebert, the Fort Bend County judge, said he can’t believe the Corps didn’t buy more land back when it built the projects. In the ‘40s, he said the county bought land for the reservoirs for just $12 an acre, or $170 per acre in today’s dollars.
“We can’t cry over spilled milk right now,” Hebert said. “But a lot of folks have tears, and a lot of milk has been spilled.”
Others say the Army Corps doesn’t deserve the brunt of the blame. After all, local officials are the ones who allowed development on all that non-government-owned land.
Those local officials are now engaged in an intense round of deflection and blame games.
“It’s too easy to look back and say ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda,’” said Emmett, the Harris County judge. “We need to find out what everybody’s role was and then make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen going forward.”
Emmett said because the reservoirs are inside the city of Houston’s jurisdiction, the city — not Harris County — is responsible for approving “plats” that clear the way for constructing new neighborhoods.
“That’s an outrageous statement,” said Costello, the city’s “flood czar,” who said that Harris County has to approve the plats for new construction, too.
Should the city have rejected the initial plats and stopped the development before it started?
“I don’t have a response to that question, and I won’t respond to that question,” Costello said.
An engineer who used to the work for the Army Corps’ Galveston District and often discloses that he “made a good living working with developers,” Costello said he wasn’t aware the reservoir “flood pools” were that large until a few weeks ago, when he first saw a copy of an Army Corps operating manual.
All the deflection makes it clear to Bedient, the Rice University engineering professor, that local government policies need to change.
“It should be treated as a regional flood problem. The city doesn’t talk to the county. The county certainly doesn’t know how to deal with the Corps of Engineers ... Nobody’s in charge,” he said.
“Nobody looks at a plat”
Harris County officials may not have realized the true risks of development around and inside the reservoirs until Tropical Storm Allison. But there is evidence that officials in neighboring Fort Bend County were worried a lot earlier.
Back in the 1990s, when development in Barker Reservoir was really ramping up, Larry Dunbar remembers getting a call from Fort Bend County officials.
Dunbar, an engineer and lawyer who has long consulted on water issues, said officials told him they felt uncomfortable allowing so much development in the reservoirs’ flood pool. So he gave them a few options, he said.
“One option was, don’t allow any development there. And it was like, well, politically we probably can’t do that,” Dunbar remembered. “So I said, another option is, make all the developers elevate the homes above the design pool” — the land behind the dams the Army Corps knew it might have to flood. Dunbar said county officials told him “that may not be practical.”
In the end, over significant opposition from developers, the county agreed to put a one-sentence disclosure of possible “controlled inundation” for plots of land in neighborhoods inside Barker. But the sentence was buried in the plat documents, which are not typically shown to homebuyers.
“It’s not like waving a big red flag,” Dunbar conceded, but it was better than nothing.
Dunbar and a colleague recently filed a class action lawsuit against the Army Corps on behalf of a resident who lives inside Barker’s flood pool.
Hebert, the county judge, said he’s not even sure those small notices on the plats are legal. Anything that could cause property values to drop — and a disclosure that a house is inside a reservoir would fit that category — is a possible governmental “taking” of private property without compensating landowners.
“In my opinion, that was the right thing to do,” Hebert said. But “I think we’re subject to being sued by the property owners.”
By all accounts, neither Harris County nor the city of Houston has required such a disclosure, but Radack, the Harris County commissioner, said he thinks “there should be every kind of disclosure known to man.”
Asked why the county hasn’t done so during his three decades in office, Radack scoffed and pointed to what he considers a more meaningful move by the county: It requires anyone building there to elevate homes six inches higher than Fort Bend County’s regulations.
“Nobody looks at a plat,” he said. “Nobody knows where to go to even see a plat.”
Selling the reservoirs as amenities
Officials didn’t simply sit back and let development occur inside the reservoirs. They actually encouraged it through other key actions — including the construction of a third highway loop around the city that would skirt the western edges of both of the emergency lakes.
Talk about building the Grand Parkway began decades ago, back in the 1980s. Some described the Parkway as visionary because it anticipated Houston’s rapid growth. When completed in 2021, the new loop will be large enough to fit the state of Rhode Island inside of it.
But proponents of sustainable development — including the environmental group Sierra Club, which sued to try to stop its construction — said the Parkway would encourage more suburban sprawl and wetland loss and would worsen flooding problems.
Several years after Allison flooded large swaths of Houston, it was time to build a crucial western segment of the giant loop, known as Segment E. During the litigation, the Sierra Club obtained documents that showed the Army Corps and state agencies also were worried about paving over more wetlands that could absorb floodwaters in the Addicks and Barker watersheds.
Development encroaching on the north side of Addicks Reservoir in Houston on Sept 7, 2016. (Michael Stravato/The Texas Tribune)
The documents included emails from Long, the Corps’ reservoir overseer, who wrote that constructing a new segment of the parkway “further compounds issues and problems that already exist with Addicks and Barker.” Even with flood mitigation, he said, “negative impacts will occur to the reservoirs.”
But Long was overruled by another Corps official, who concluded, “No impacts to the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs are expected.” That conclusion wound up in the Army Corps' final permit allowing Segment E to be built.
The court documents show that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulatory agency, also expressed concerns about that segment of the highway, writing that “permeable surface [prairie and wetlands] loss will contribute to flooding problems” and that “flooding impacts need to be addressed.” Other state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, raised similar concerns.
The Army Corps received more than 70 requests to hold a public hearing about the project but decided not to. “It is unlikely that new information would be gained by holding a public hearing. Therefore a public hearing will not be held,” the agency wrote in documents made public in the lawsuit.
Houston lawyer Jim Blackburn, who filed the suit on behalf of the Sierra Club, said the documents made clear that the Army Corps “prioritized building the Grand Parkway over fixing the issue with Addicks and Barker development.”
“This is not dumb, bad planning,” he said. “This is very well-thought-out, bad planning.”
Segment E spurred more growth in what’s called the Energy Corridor, a narrow sliver of land along Interstate 10 located smack in the middle of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
For people moving into the area, the reservoirs aren’t billed as a disadvantage or threat. Quite the opposite.
In 2001, the Texas Legislature created The Energy Corridor Management District to oversee and promote growth in the area. It touted the reservoirs as “two of the largest unspoiled natural areas of any metropolitan region in the U.S.” — and the parks and sports fields within them as amenities that support an “active, healthy lifestyle.”
Nowhere on its website does the district mention flood risks.
A spokesman for the district declined an interview request, saying it is “more concerned now with getting life and business back to normal and then pursuing our master plan vision for the District that is guiding our efforts to make a more livable, walkable/bikeable and connected place.”
“The District also does not deal with development regulations, which is the City of Houston's purview,” he added.
No end to development
Local officials say it’s too late to go back and tear up all of the development in the reservoirs. But they’re divided on what should be done now that Harvey has exposed the flood dangers.
Hebert said he’s not sure what can be done to restrict further development in Barker. Because Fort Bend County doesn’t have zoning power, it could try to buy out homes in the reservoir, but that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars; the average value of the 3,000 homes that flooded is $360,000, Hebert said.
And he’s not sure drastic measures are needed. “There were woolly mammoths roaming around the last time that we had rain like this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Harris County has taken some steps. Last year, officials strengthened flood control regulations for developments inside and near Addicks and Barker reservoirs that are within county boundaries.
For the first time ever, some new developments will have to put in detention ponds, which temporarily hold water and then slowly discharge it into nearby streams. They’ll also have to install some form of “retention” that can store the water more permanently. That way, excess water won’t end up in the reservoirs during big storms.
Emmett has also called for more changes to development regulation, though it’s unclear what that would involve. “We need to start over,” he said, “and look at everything.”
Bedient, the Rice University engineering professor, said those regulations will help, but they’re too little, too late. He said the only thing that can really help solve the problem is to build a long-discussed third reservoir upstream of Addicks and Barker to hold excess floodwater.
County and city officials have called loudly for such a project, which would cost at least $300 million, to be funded as part of a federal Harvey recovery package. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican whose district includes part of the greater Houston region, also is championing the project.
But it’s still not clear exactly where a new reservoir would be located. When Potok was assistant director of the Harris County Flood Control District, he tried to get landowners to the table, but “when push came to shove, quite frankly, everybody had to give up something,” he recalled. The effort stalled and hasn’t been revived.
Emmett said he thinks it's a good idea, but he’s not sure there’s enough undeveloped land left for a new reservoir. “What's in [that land] now?’” he said. “You could have whole subdivisions already built.’”
Meanwhile, there’s no indication that development in the area will slow — even after Harvey.
Houston Realtor-broker Sam Chaudhry, who also serves on the government affairs committee of the Texas Association of Realtors, said he’s decided not to sell homes in neighborhoods inside the reservoirs anymore.
And he said he would never have sold homes there in the first place if he had known about the risks — information he said the city and Army Corps knew but “didn't disclose.”
“I found that out from TV, actually,” he said. “I was like, are you kidding me?”
But he’s probably the exception. For-sale signs proliferate in flood-ravaged neighborhoods inside the reservoirs. Chaudhry said many of them will be snapped up by “an army of investors.”
One five-bedroom home in Lakes on Eldridge, the same subdivision where Jeremy Boutor lives, was listed for $678,000 about two weeks before it flooded during Harvey.
The seller’s agent, Moira Holden, tried to put a positive spin on things when she updated the online listing that decreased the asking price by $10,000. “Unfortunately this stunning home did flood and is being refurbished to the highest spec!” it says. “Fabulous chance to choose your finishes!”
When asked if she would disclose to potential buyers that the home was inside Addicks Reservoir, Holden didn't have a clear answer. “I will obviously disclose whatever we are required to disclose,” she said, pointing out that the home wasn't in a floodplain. “I would hope that the buyer's Realtor would do their due diligence on that.”
Edna Meyer-Nelson, a developer who calls herself a “sixth-generation Houstonian,” said she didn’t know that the shopping center she recently bought was in Addicks Reservoir. She said the development didn’t flood during Harvey but that she’d be willing to submit to stricter building regulations as long as everyone else buys in, too.
“We’re filling up everything with cement, and then we expect [the water] to go somewhere,” she said. “There’s nowhere for the water to go. We need to build more retention ponds.”
But she resisted the idea that development inside the reservoirs needs to stop or slow down.
“We’re going to cover every inch of the land that we can cover,” she said. “I think we need to get more ingenious, but I don’t think we need to stop.”
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune are looking into home buyouts after Hurricane Harvey. Has your home flooded repeatedly, and have you volunteered for a buyout? E-mail harvey@propublica.org.
Map sources: US Army Corps of Engineers, Texas Water Development Board, FEMA, Harris County Appraisal District, Fort Bend Central Appraisal District, USGS Orthoimagery. Note: Our graphics do not capture peak flooding between August 26 and Sept. 2 because the Army Corps only posted inundation data beginning on Sept. 3.
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Judge deals blow to tribes in Dakota Access pipeline ruling.
The judge refused to shut down the oil pipeline during an environmental review. Lawyers pointed to a ‘historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes.’
The judge refused to shut down the oil pipeline during an environmental review. Lawyers pointed to a ‘historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes.’
Phil McKenna
BY PHIL MCKENNA
FOLLOW @MCKENNAPR
OCT 11, 2017
Members of the Standing Rock tribe had protested the pipeline route under their water supply, a lake on the Missouri River that they consider sacred. Thousands of people joined them. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
The Dakota Access pipeline may continue pumping oil during an ongoing environmental review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
The ruling was a blow to the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota, whose opposition to the pipeline sparked an international outcry last fall, as well as heated demonstrations by pipeline opponents who were evicted from protest camps near the Standing Rock reservation earlier this year.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said he would not rescind a previous permit for the pipeline issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers while the agency reassesses its prior environmental review of the 1,200-mile pipeline.
Errors in the Corps' prior environmental assessment are "not fundamental or incurable" and there is a "serious possibility that the Corps will be able to substantiate its prior conclusions," Boasberg stated in a 28-page ruling. However, he also admonished the agency to conduct a thorough review or run the risk of more lawsuits.
'Our Concerns Have Not Been Heard'
Jan Hasselman, an attorney with Earthjustice who is representing the tribes, called the decision "deeply disappointing."
"There is a historic pattern of putting all the risk and harm on tribes and letting outsiders reap the profits," Hasselman said. "That historic pattern is continuing here."
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Mike Faith, who was inaugurated Wednesday morning, agreed.
"This pipeline represents a threat to the livelihoods and health of our Nation every day it is operational," Faith said. "It only makes sense to shut down the pipeline while the Army Corps addresses the risks that this court found it did not adequately study."
"From the very beginning of our lawsuit, what we have wanted is for the threat this pipeline poses to the people of Standing Rock Indian Reservation to be acknowledged," he said. "Today, our concerns have not been heard and the threat persists."
Energy Transfer Partners, the company that built the pipeline and has been operating it since June 1, did not respond to a request for comment.
Fears of a Missouri River Spill
On June 14, Boasberg ruled that the Corps had failed to fully follow the National Environmental Policy Act when it determined that the pipeline would not have a significant environmental impact.
Boasberg found that the agency didn't adequately consider how an oil spill into the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation might affect the tribe or whether the tribe, a low-income, minority community, was disproportionately affected by the pipeline.
The agency's initial environmental assessment considered census tract data within a half-mile radius of where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River. The Standing Rock reservation, where three-quarters of the population are Native American and 40 percent live in poverty, was not included in the analysis because it falls just outside that half-mile circle, another 80 yards farther from the river crossing.
Boasberg ordered a re-assessment of the Corps' prior environmental review but had not decided whether the pipeline had to be shut down in the meantime.
"The dispute over the Dakota Access pipeline has now taken nearly as many twists and turns as the 1,200-mile pipeline itself," Boasberg wrote in Wednesday's ruling.
The Army Corps anticipates completing its ongoing environmental review in April, according to a recent court filing. The agency could determine that the pipeline meets environmental requirements or it could call for a more thorough environmental study that could take years to complete.
Boasberg admonished the Corps not to treat the process simply "as an exercise in filling out the proper paperwork." Hasselman said he fears the agency may further delay a decision.
"A big concern is that process dragging on forever," he said.
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OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES
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US judge allows Dakota pipeline to run as Army conducts study.
Oil can keep flowing through the contested Dakota Access Pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new environmental review of the duct through next April, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oil can keep flowing through the contested Dakota Access Pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new environmental review of the duct through next April, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled the court would not void a permit that has allowed Energy Transfer Partners LP’s pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois to transport crude oil for months. Oil was loaded into the pipeline in May and it has shipped crude since June 1.
Later in June, Boasberg ordered the Army Corps to conduct further environmental reviews of the pipeline, saying it failed to adequately consider any harm of a potential oil spill to the fishing and hunting rights of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
That pushed the Standing Rock tribe in August to urge the court to immediately shut the line, saying its members were exposed to the very risks that the Army Corps was studying.
The decision about the 1,170 mile (1,880 km) Dakota Access pipeline was a boost for President Donald Trump’s policy of making the United States “energy dominant” by maximizing the production of fossil fuels for domestic use and for shipping to allies.
The pipeline is opposed by environmentalists and the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes.
Standing Rock had sued the Army Corps in July 2016 over the pipeline, arguing the line could contaminate its water source, the Missouri River.
Boasberg wrote in the ruling that shutting the line would not cause major economic harm, as the company had claimed.
But voiding the permit allowing the pipeline to ship oil would not be the “appropriate remedy” because there was a possibility the Army Corps will be able to justify its earlier decision not to complete a full environmental review, he wrote.
If the tribe is still not happy after the environmental review is completed, it will have an opportunity to address whether the Army Corps fulfilled its duties, Boasberg wrote.
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Mike Faith said he was disappointed that the tribe’s concerns had not been heard. “This pipeline represents a threat to the livelihoods and health of our Nation every day it is operational,” Faith said.
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Peter Cooney and Matthew Lewis
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