Third Ward TX

http://www.thirdwardtx.com/

3rd Ward, TX is a 57-minute-long documentary on a community planning initiative in Houston, Texas’ third ward as depicted by filmmaker Andrew Garrison. As quoted from the website:

Project Row Houses is the unexpected home of cutting-edge art and visionary thinking about inner-city renewal…When deep-pocket developers arrive, art, life, and real estate collide and Project Row Houses must offer new thinking about livable communities.

Watch the trailer on the blog:


You can purchase the documentary HERE.

Galveston developement threaten wetlands

"The site of the United States' most deadly natural disaster, the 1900 Hurricane, Galveston Island is one of the most vulnerable targets for a deadly storm strike. The city hangs on the northwest lip of the Gulf of Mexico, with only one major escape route to the mainland and subject to fast-developing cyclones that leave little time for evacuations.

Yet as city planners consider a proposal for the biggest single development of homes, hotels and marinas in the island's history, they are resisting using a $50,000 geological hazard map the city commissioned to help plan safe and sustainable development."

City commission members John Listowski, Kelley Sullivan, Willy Gonzalez and Craig Brown voted to approve a preliminary plat and zone change for the huge new Marquette development project on Galveston’s West End....only three members of the commission — Chula Ross Sanchez, Janice Stanton and Elizabeth Beeton — voted against the project.

On of the members states that "1,000 acres of open ranch land reaching 3 miles down the island from beach to bay, 8 mile road to 11 mile road on Galveston Island is in jeopardy of being smothered in 4,900 units, 2 high rises on the beach, a marina in the wetlands and uplands, a golf course, filling in 74 acres of wetlands for weekend homes. All this in an area cited as a fragile geohazard zone by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas."

Sources:
Dolph Tillotson, publisher's column sunday June 24

Chronicle editorial, June 11, 2007

The Price of Oil in Texas

From today's NY Times:

Texas refines more than a quarter of America’s gasoline and are the largest onshore producers of both petroleum and natural gas. Texas is owed a debt of gratitude for shouldering so much of the burden of pollution and the risk of handling dangerous chemicals and fuels.

"Harris County, which includes Houston, reports more toxic releases to the Environmental Protection Agency than any other county in the United States. The region along the Gulf Coast is home to 250 petrochemical plants, and in Houston alone, an estimated 78,000 kids go to school within two miles of a refinery or chemical plant. Between 1995 and 2005, 27 of the 48 Americans who died in accidents at major refineries were from Texas. Oil provides a paycheck for many Texas families, but refineries also pollute their air and water, and cause them to worry about their safety....The level of carcinogens released in the processing of a barrel of oil is higher in Texas than anywhere else in the country, said Eric Schaeffer, a former regulator for the E.P.A. who’s now with the Environmental Integrity Project."

View video of the Texas City disaster, made by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. It shows a minute-by-minute reconstruction of flammable liquids overwhelming the plant’s safety devices and eventually blowing up.