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Owls, more owls and federal land grabbers Owls In response to a 2013 lawsuit by WildEarth Guardians on behalf of the Mexican spotted owl, a federal judge in Arizona has ordered a halt to timber operations on all New Mexico forests and one forest in Arizona (about 12 million acres). WildEarth Guardians Executive Director John Horning said, “With this decision, the agencies will finally be held accountable for ensuring that all forest management practices help, not hinder, owl recovery.” The attorney for the organization on this case explained that “certain timber projects will be paused in light of the...

Have you heard of the "Great Outdoors Initiative"? Across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It's another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life. In April, President Obama issued a memorandum outlining his "21st century strategy for America's great outdoors." It was addressed to the interior secretary, the agriculture secretary, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The memo...

So you thought the creation of the NLCS was just so BLM could do a better job of managing special lands already under their control. That's how the program was sold. To better manage 27 million acres. Well we all better think again. The document I'm about to describe provides for the BLM to have 14 new monuments on existing BLM land and acquire at the very least 2.6 million acres to add to the NLCS. I am in possession of part of a DOI document marked "Internal Draft - NOT FOR RELEASE". The part I have is pgs. 15-21,...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

Last week's story about the uncertainties endured by people who live in or near the route of the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor prompted many messages of support. But I wish there had been room in the story to quote Steve Huber, a University of Houston law professor who spoke at a January meeting in Bellville on the project. Huber opposed the corridor plan without taking the position — adopted, for instance, by U.S. Rep. John Culberson toward rail on Richmond — that the people most directly affected deserve the most consideration when a route is chosen. "My position carefully avoided the sort...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

For Peyton Gilbert, the battle over the Trans-Texas Corridor is reminiscent of the moment in 1836 when Lt. Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited those willing to fight thousands of Mexican soldiers to step across. "That line in the sand is the Trans-Texas Corridor, and it's a threat to our sovereignty again, just like at the Alamo," said Gilbert, 14, who is from Whitehouse, near Tyler. Gilbert was among a large crowd of people who marched down Congress Avenue to the Capitol on Saturday afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed highway-rail-utility corridor...

FORT WORTH -- The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

In comments filed with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Texas Farm Bureau said the Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) for the proposed I-69 corridor “would not withstand judicial scrutiny.” Under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act, these detailed environmental studies are conducted under rules developed by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). According to the farm organization’s comments, the failure of the DEIS to consider the environmental impact of using existing rights-of-way–rather than a single minded focus on building a completely new route–means the study could not hold up in...

Texas spirit was alive and well at the Navasota DEIS public hearing on Feb. 28. Opposition groups, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, came from as far as Washington, D.C. to give recorded testimony, and get a first hand look at TxDOT process procedures. Assistant Director of Communications, Leigh Strope, who attended the meeting on behalf of the 34,000 Texas Teamsters Union members, says, “Teamsters want to stop the dangerous trend of selling our roads and bridges to foreign investors so they can slap tolls on the driving public. We are also concerned because the Trans-Texas Corridor would form...

REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence. more stories like this Obama faces heat over aide's NAFTA remarks to Canadians Texas, Ohio could decide Dem nomination Canada says didn't misrepresent Obama over NAFTA McCain tags Dems on trade treaty NAFTA seen differently in Ohio, Texas And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called...

Heated comments flew around the room as more than 175 citizens gathered to voice their opinions at the TxDOT open house and public hearing on the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor held at the Humble Civic Center on Feb. 28, 2008. Congress designated I-69 as a high priority corridor in 1991 and again in 1998. In 2002, TxDOT unveiled the Trans-Texas Corridor project to accommodate Texas' future transportation needs. The TTC is a part of a 4,000-mile system of rail lines, truck and car lanes and concentrated utility routes to improve international and intrastate movement of goods and people from Canada to the...

A handful of Kendleton residents were among several dozen to speak out against the Trans-Texas Corridor at a public hearing Monday night in Rosenberg. “I personally think it's a slap in the face for Texas to take the land for pennies on the dollar, to put a road on it and to make you pay a toll for it,” said Jeremy West, one of the speakers from Kendleton. The Trans-Texas Corridor is a proposal for a network of highways, rail lines and utilities throughout Texas that would be financed by private interests who would seek to profit through tolls and...

n what may have been the first hint of victory for opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, a high-ranking Texas Department of Transportation official said Thursday he regretted his agency's communication failures and said one proposed version of the corridor, a 10-lane super highway with rail and utility pathways, will "probably not" be built in East Texas, based on the overwhelming resistance to the idea expressed at public hearings on the project this month. Phillip Russell, assistant executive director for innovative project development at TxDOT, was the keynote speaker at the Lone Star Legislative Summit at SFA Thursday, where he...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

TEXAS CITY — A massive superhighway that Texans have protested at public hearings statewide drew heated opposition among Galveston County residents, who said they feared the toll road would cripple the local shipping industry and do nothing to improve insufficient hurricane evacuation routes. The Trans-Texas Corridor would wind from Laredo to Corpus Christi, wrap around the western edge of Greater Houston, parallel Interstate 59 through East Texas and leave the state in Texarkana. But residents at a public hearing Thursday night in Texas City questioned the real purpose for the road, which would also be part of a national Interstate...

NACOGDOCHES — The rows of extra chairs brought into the The Fredonia's biggest meeting room Thursday night were not enough to accommodate more than 750 people who attended an open house and public hearing on the proposed TTC-69 highway. Texas Department of Transportation officials heard hours of public testimony that continued late into the night overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new roadways through East Texas. Applause throughout the hours-long meeting never swelled as loudly as it did when the first speaker of the night, state Rep. Wayne Christian, told TxDOT representatives emphatically that "our answer is 'no' on the...

A Waller County organization opposing a massive highway project is planning two informational meetings to help citizens prepare for upcoming hearings. Citizens for a Better Waller County (CBWC) says it will hold meetings to prepare residents for Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) hearings in Waller County. The hearings will be to discuss an environmental impact statement on the proposed Trans Texas Corridor’s route that could bring it through Waller, Austin and Washington counties. CBWC’s meetings will be held next Tuesday at the Waller High School cafeteria in Waller and Monday, Feb. 25 at the Brookshire Convention Center in Brookshire. Both...