Texas

“The water shortage in the Coastal Bend is the result of a historic five-year drought,” it said. “Currently, the City of Corpus Christi has $1 billion in City Council-approved and funded water projects underway to address our water needs. The City remains committed to ensuring water security for the more than 500,000 residents and our commercial and industrial customers.”

Depletion of this region’s reservoirs would lead to “controlled depression” for the local economy, “mass unemployment” and “industrial total shutdown,” according to a two-page report by Don Roach, former assistant general manager of the San Patricio Municipal Water District, which supplies many of the region’s large industrial water users.

That includes refineries operated by Flint Hills Resources, Valero and Citgo that provide jet fuel to Texas airports and meet much of the state’s daily demand for gasoline.

“This waiting disaster is under the radar for the rest of the state,” said Roach, who worked 20 years at the water district and retired in 2014. “We hear nothing from the Texas politicians about the seriousness of the situation or any state plan to mitigate it.”

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/lemmyshitpost/p/1850865/i-was-told-it-would-be-a-cultural-experience

Current wastewater permits for chemical plants don’t explicitly authorize discharge of plastics, other than “trace amounts” of “floating solids.”

“Dow would like to be able to discharge an unspecified amount of plastic,” Ramirez said. “It could set a dangerous precedent, and we’ll fight it every step of the way.”

Texas is a failed, theological, extremist, oil state that regularly commits acts of state terrorism resulting in mass casualty public health events that were entirely avoidable.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43732866

Three people died and 14 people have been hospitalized in a shooting on West Sixth Street in Austin early Sunday morning. The shooting is being investigated by the FBI as a potential act of terrorism, according to Acting Special Agent in Charge Alex Doran.

The suspect, who's included in the number of dead, was killed by Austin police officers responding to the shooting.

The shooting happened at Buford's, a bar at the intersection of West Sixth and Rio Grande streets. In a 9:30 a.m. news conference, Austin Police Department Chief Lisa Davis said the suspect drove around the block several times in an SUV before he rolled down his windows and shot bar customers on the patio and in front of the bar.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

“It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions,” said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children’s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations. When a pregnant child is moved to Texas, “as long as she is in Texas, she can’t access an abortion – without a federal official needing to deny her an abortion”, he said.

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The “total disregard” for the rights of pregnant and nursing detainees is a “dramatic violation” of international law and public health practices ensuring consensual medical treatment, said Diana Romero, professor and director of the Center on Immigrant, Refugee and Global Health at the CUNY graduate school of public health.