Heard about this via @TexasObserver@texasobserver.social at:

www.texasobserver.org/sordid-story-behind-lethal-injection/

I've heard before about how lethal injection is pseudoscience. Perhaps a full treatment is given in this book. Now that I've decided to go into nursing, having a full understanding of the system could help to motivate healthcare to take a stronger stance against it.

#DeathPenalty #LethalInjection #CriminalJustice #TexasObserver

(comment on Secrets of the Killing State)

https://www.texasobserver.org/staying-afloat/

>“We need to have a culture of efficiency in our state,” Walker said. There are plenty of ideas for conservation and reuse of water in the State Water Plan that need funding, she said, especially in smaller rural communities that don’t have as much technical expertise as larger cities and their utilities. “There’s a lot of good things we can be spending money on.”
>
>While both the proposed legislation and the current state water plan acknowledge that Texas also needs to conserve water and fix existing water systems, so far leaders seem more focused on grander plans to build new infrastructure.

Until Texas bans lawn watering state-wide, we ain't fuckin' serious about the water crisis.

>These days, SAWS [San Antonio Water System]—which serves 2 million people in Bexar, Medina, and Atascosa counties—has nine different sources of water. The utility can now draw from four additional underground aquifers, its own recycled wastewater, and three reservoirs, including Medina Lake. But because of drought, San Antonio hasn’t used Medina Lake for years.
>
>SAWS has invested instead in its “advanced storage and recovery” system as a better insurance policy. The utility doesn’t always use its full annual water rights from the Edwards Aquifer, especially during rainy times. So SAWS has turned to injecting extra Edwards water into a different rock formation directly below the H2Oaks Center, the Carrizo Aquifer, to use later during dry summers and droughts. Utility staff refer fondly to this reserve as “the bubble.”
>
>All this water used in homes, businesses, and public buildings throughout San Antonio eventually flows from drains and toilets downhill to the city’s lowest elevation point, where SAWS has built its wastewater recycling plant. Here, trash—mostly “flushable” wipes that in reality are not at all flushable—gets screened out of the water, and the plant’s workers diligently cultivate microbes that eat the city’s biological waste.
>
>At the end of this lengthy process, the treated water flows into the Medina River, just above where the Medina itself flows into the larger San Antonio River. The water entering the river looks clean, like a small waterfall more than anything. Trees surround the wastewater plant’s outfall, the air smells fresh, and birds fly by.
>
>“You should take us for granted,” said SAWS CEO Robert Puente, who previously served in the Texas Legislature and chaired the House Natural Resources Committee, in an interview with the Observer. The utility has plenty of water for at least the next decade, and longer if San Antonio’s recent population growth levels out, he said.

Excellent! So we already have a model for what every other city needs to be doing.

#water #hydrology #texas #drought #Municipal #utilities #SanAntonio #TexasObserver @TexasObserver

https://www.texasobserver.org/brazos-river-development-pollution-drifting-toward-disaster/

>What’s more, Dow-Freeport is operating with a wastewater permit that expired in 2019 but has been “administratively continued” by TCEQ, according to an agency spokesperson. That means Dow is allowed to follow outdated rules while a TCEQ review of the facility’s new draft permit drags on.
>
>“It is concerning that this is coming up on five years, which is, frankly, the length of time a new permit would have been,” said Josh Kratka, a senior staff attorney at the National Environmental Law Center. While Kratka doesn’t know what’s transpiring between Dow and TCEQ specifically, he explained that many companies try to convince regulators that they can’t reasonably comply with pollution limits in order to delay enforcement. “Rather than really crack down, enforcing a solution quickly, the regulators just give them more time,” he said.

This article was written in 2023. So far as I can tell, the permit in question, WQ0000007000, was originally granted in 1978. Its latest "approval date" is from 2016, and its latest "expiration date" is... STILL 2019. And yet the permit is still "active" rather than expired.

You can check at: https://www6.tceq.texas.gov/wqpaq/index.cfm

Put in "WQ0000007000" for the State Permit No., click Add, then click Search.

(Sidenote: still using ColdFusion? In 2025? Damn).

Ouch.

#TexasObserver @TexasObserver #BrazosRiver #Brazos #Brazoria #Texas #TCEQ #FreePort #CleanWaterAct #CleanWater

https://www.texasobserver.org/rio-grande-water-drifting-toward-disaster/

>In McAllen, about 60 percent of municipal water use goes to water lawns, according to Jim Darling, a former McAllen mayor and head of the Region M Water Planning Group.
>
>...
>
>This efficient drip irrigation method is used on about 20 percent of local citrus orchards, he said. The other 80 percent flood entire fields, using twice as much water. Historically, the water savings of drip irrigation haven’t mattered much to farmers, who pay only $10 per acre-foot (about 326,000 gallons).

Absolute insanity.

#TexasObserver @TexasObserver

Y’all, here’s a shocker! #ICE has known #Nazis on staff. For example, James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country.

Here’s some choice words of ICE attorney Rodden; Quote: It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes. Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders,” the account posted in March 2024. “Yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position.”

There’s more, and it’s worse. Support free press, consider subbing to the #TexasObserver, they do good work. Also, fuck ICE.

https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-supremacist-x-account/