Corea's mugshot

The weirdness surrounding disgraced attorney Tom Corea has several levels. There's the obvious one, in which he was sued by several former clients who said he'd stolen their settlement money; indicted for felony theft by the Dallas County District Attorney's office; had disbarment proceedings initiated against him by the State Bar of Texas; and was evicted from his swanky Design District offices for non-payment. Corea's former landlords say he responded to that eviction, as one does, by trashing the place, including drawing penises all over the office , strewing used toilet paper about, and writing several insults on the walls about an out-of-state judge being a "Fat Whore."

Corea's bond was revoked for that last incident, the one with the dicks and the impugning of lady judges. He's currently in Dallas County Jail, with bail set at $575,000.

The other level of weirdness has to do with Corea's open cases, 300 or so of them, and who should take them over.

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It doesn't look so bad from up here.

You might have already figured this out given the perennial threat of rolling blackouts and grid operator ERCOT's own admission that, come 2013, there won't be sufficient wattage to cover peak demand, but the state's electrical grid isn't the best. In fact, as the Texas Tribune reports today, it's the worst.

So says the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which knows these things. The report notes things like "Insufficient reserves during peak hours could result in emergency operating conditions, including the possibility of curtailing interruptible loads and even rotating outages of Firm loads," but we already knew that. But look at Page 1 of the executive summary at the chart showing reserve margins. Notice how the bar for ERCOT is shorter than for everyone else. That means that Texas, more than even California, is on the precipice of outages.

Partly, that's a result of demand, which has increased here more than elsewhere. Partly, it's that power generators have been reluctant to invest in new capacity since the glut of natural gas has driven electricity prices down and because their Mack trucks weren't sufficiently full of cash, a problem that was remedied recently when the Public Utility Commission raised the cap on wholesale electricity prices by 50 percent.

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Texas electricity regulators voted today to raise the price cap on wholesale electricity from $3,000 to $4,500 per megawatt hour -- the equivalent of powering roughly 330 homes for one hour -- by Aug. 1. It's only June and already the electrical grid is being tested by record peak demand, prompting calls for conservation.

Regulators are betting that the stuffing-cash-in-generators'-pockets approach will encourage them to build new power plants so rolling blackouts don't become a Texas summer tradition, like bitching about how hot it is. One of the PUC commissioners, Ken Anderson, abstained from voting on the rate hike. He's spoken with Unfair Park before, and told us he basically thought doing it this summer was a terrible idea. For starters, he bets we'll eke by this summer without shedding load, which is the electricity-nerd speak for cutting your power off.

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Texas is in a tight spot. Electric supply simply isn't keeping up with consumer demand in a state bursting at the seams. By 2013, grid operator ERCOT predicts we won't have enough to cover peak demand, when we're all sweating and dashing for our thermostats.

Summer 2012, on the other hand, will be touch and go, but we just might eke by. "Based on the National Weather Service's three-month outlook, we are expecting above-normal temperatures this summer - though not as extreme as last summer's," ERCOT veep of system planning and grid operations Kent Saathoff said in a statement this afternoon. "If that's the case, we expect to be able to meet the peak demand on the grid, unless we have above-normal generation outages."

And that's one big "if," considering the extremes we've seen lately. Grid managers are forecasting peak electric demand below last summer's all-time record, but still high enough that if enough power plants are offline, we'll be looking at rotating outages.

ERCOT's board recently approved emergency measures that would allow the grid operator to bring idled generating units back online. It's also anticipating a report due June 1 that will take a look at the dearth of electric generation we're facing and how to solve it. Bets on whether it recommends increasing or removing the price cap on electricity?

Photos by Anna Merlan

County Commissioner Elba Garcia and Judge Clay Jenkins at yesterday's ribbon-cutting ceremony at The Bridge

​Things all went wrong for Renee so recently she can still count the days: 32. That's how long it's been since she lost her job, her car was repossessed and her house was foreclosed on. "Everything just fell apart so quickly," she says.

She's in her mid-40s with bright green eyes. Yesterday she was wearing a teal tank T-shirt and a delicate silver cross around her neck, sitting at the table in the outdoor pavilion at The Bridge, the homeless shelter and outreach center near the downtown Farmers Market. "All of a sudden, there I am, putting things in boxes outside my house." To make things worse, she said, all this happened less than a week after her 24-year-old daughter, an Army sergeant, was deployed to Afghanistan.

"I miss her so much," she added softly, looking teary.

I met Renee during what was billed as a good-news event: Dallas County officials invited media to The Bridge Wednesday afternoon to look at their newest acquisition: four high-powered cooling fans in the outdoor pavilion, soon to be followed by two more. The Port-A-Cooler fans were sponsored by TXU, which donated $2,500; AT&T, which gave another $2,500; Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, which gave $3,000, and the Meadows Foundation, which gave the final $8,000. Representatives from all these groups gathered in a small dining room with white tablecloths just off The Bridge's main courtyard.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins was there too. Administrators at The Bridge credited Jenkins with recommending the project and helping to secure the corporate funding. He looked freshly starched in a blue blazer and a flag pin. His tiny blond daughter huddled under his arm as he stood in front of the audience, gazing intently at her pink sequined shoes while he spoke.

"I know with separation of church and state, I'm not supposed to get up here and talk about this," the judge said. He talked about getting into a car accident in 1993. "I was dead for a time," he said, sounding cheerful. After his recovery, he said, "I read my Bible and thought about ways to honor God." He concluded that the best way was to "help those in need, and help the homeless."

Commissioner Elba Garcia, in a white suit and matching heels, agreed. "It's amazing how close we've all been to homelessness," she said.More »

Photos by Anna Merlan

​"I don't want to talk about all that." The pastor took some letters from the mailbox without glancing over. "What I really want to talk about is getting more people to come to church on Sundays. You want to talk about religion, you can come by anytime."

Yesterday, we got an email from the police department saying that Air 1 had been doing a routine patrol over South Central Expressway when they noticed a dead calf lying in a corral. The pilot said there were other cows and horses nearby that appeared to have no access to food or water. Animal Control has taken over the investigation, but they haven't issued any statements yet about what they found, and they're not answering questions, saying they've been "overwhelmed" with calls.

We were referred instead to City spokesman Frank Librio, who told us that brand-new Animal Services director Jody Jones isn't yet ready to handle media requests. He said that the incident is "under investigation," adding, "We're not going to reveal anything to do with the investigation, because we don't want to jeopardize it."

James Hatley Jr.

​When I arrived at the property yesterday, I found the Feed Store of God Cowboy Church and James Hatley Jr., its pastor. The church's name is on a trim white sign out front, and spray-painted again on a battered old trailer sitting out in the yard. It's way down South Central Expressway in a lonely corner of town, perched in a stretch of auto salvage yards and dirt side roads.

Hatley told me he didn't want to discuss the allegations. But since I'd driven all the way down, he invited me inside anyway, to talk about the Lord.

"We practice the letter of God," Hatley said. "The whole of the Word. Laying on of hands and all that." On Sundays, he anoints the heads of his congregation -- which includes his wife, nieces, nephews and cousins, among others, he said -- with oil.

True to its name, the building itself is an old feed store, one that Hatley said had been in his family 11 years before it closed and he converted the space into a church. "Used to be you could get food for your animals here," he told me, "now you can get food for your soul." More »

Speaking of the Trinity River ...

Perhaps I didn't end up visiting the under-construction Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge on the best day for our ongoing Unfair Park series, "Sweaty Dispatches From a Sweltering City." While I was out on the pavement girded with Italian steel early Thursday afternoon, there were all these plump, cottony wisps in the sky -- whatever those are -- running interference between the sun, a Swiss-cheese ozone layer and my motel tan.

Nevertheless, I linked up with Duane Milligan, the TxDOT engineer overseeing the construction of Santiago Calatrava's addition to the Dallas skyline, at a quadruple-wide trailer sitting beneath the I-30 overpass on Riverfront. A strapping grad of both UT and U of Houston, we discussed shooting feral hogs with .357s in South Texas and, incidentally, the stray bullet that hit the trailer earlier that week (police ruled it criminal mischief), before setting out for the bridge.

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Photos by Leslie Minora

Charles Allen gives Trinity canoe tours extraspecially early to avoid the unbearable afternoon heat.

This morning, Charles Allen, who runs Trinity River Expeditions, pulled his white 15-passenger van into the parking of the Sylvan Avenue boat ramp, positioning the bulky vehicle so he could easily move the neat stack of green canoes towed in back a little closer to the water's edge -- a habitual parking practice, no doubt. Stepping out of the vehicle with his long hair grazing his gray T-shirt and wearing hiking sneakers and a tan camping hat, he looked every bit the Internet-shunning nature lover that he is. It's too bad today's potential customers were pillaged by the heat; he came to the area not to lead a tour but simply to stare at the river while talking to me about how damned hot it is.

While Dallas summer 2011 has achieved the climactic equivalent of hell on earth, it's downright turbulent for Allen. This year's sweaty season, always accompanied by a late-summer ebb in business, began with the city's Standing Wave project -- the city's concrete white-water-creating structure that is presently unfit for human use. By now, surely you know all about Allen's run-ins with the city over this boondoggle.

Several months ago, Allen, a 30-year Trinity canoeing veteran, had heard rumors of the Standing Wave's creation, but only realized construction was underway at the start of the summer, when he sent people downstream in canoes, only to have them tumble in a churning mix-master of heaving water. Unhappy customers, to say the least. He's used to the Trinity's unpredictable floods and low times, but this was something else altogether. Allen has since stopped taking clients along what was his most popular route, from Sylvan to Loop 12.

It was clear from the outset: This summer wouldn't be easy.

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​CBS Early Show's Marysol Castro's in town -- can't imagine why. Oh, right. It's hot. Still, not so hot that two high-school footballers can't spend their after-practice hours toiling in the sun -- one on a construction site, the other decorating doorknobs with fliers, both hoping to buy a car. Their story follows.

In the meantime, what you see above was dispatched by the National Weather Service last night -- a reminder that, yes, this is hot. But not 1980 hot. Not yet. My 8-year-old son asked last night: "Dad, what did you do in 1980?" Um ... I was at summer camp down in Bruceville, which means I was outside, like, all the time. And, according to my folks, Dad's Second Avenue auto-parts business had its best summer ever. Water pumps and thermostats.

And, while we're on the subject of the hot hot heat: Several Friends of Unfair Park have asked if and when Dallas can expect more significant water restrictions, like those being imposed on surrounding municipalities. I asked Frank Librio, City Hall spokesman, if city officials are considering going to Drought Response Stage 1, which would trigger mandatory two-day watering restrictions broken down according to even- and odd-number street addresses. To which he responded thusly via email:

The lakes are currently 84% full and we continue to monitor conditions daily. The City's conservation program has been very effective in changing "how people use water."

Stage 1 could be triggered three ways: if the reservoirs are below 65% full; a man-made or natural contamination of a water supply; and finally if we have reached or exceeded delivery capacity for 4 consecutive days.

He also passed along this, for anyone who dares to look ahead: the City of Dallas Drought Contingency Plan, adopted by the city council last summer.More »

​With each passing day this week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas sets a new record for peak demand -- and today is no different. One day after hinting that rolling blackouts may be headed our way, ERCOT sends word that at 2:50 this afternoon it initiated Energy Emergency Alert Level 1, meaning reserves dropped below an acceptable level. (2,300 megawatts, if you must know, which is not enough to get you back to the future. But little-known fact: 2,300 megawatts = one Mike Watt.) And that ain't the half of it, according to Kent Saathoff, vice president of system planning and operations for The Grid:

Forecast for peak demand today is more than 68,684 MW, exceeding yesterday's new all-time record of 67,929 MW. Prior to this year, the record was 65,776 MW (Aug. 23, 2010).

"There's a possibility that we may have to go to a level 2 emergency today which authorizes operators to drop the interruptible loads -- large customers paid to be dropped in a level 2 emergency. Dropping the load resources provides extra capacity for the remaining customers," Saathoff said.

Now, keep in mind: A Level 1 Emergency just triggers a power-conservation watch, which you're no doubt already doing by cutting off the A/C, sitting in a bathtub full of ice and using a Crazy Straw to drink from several chilled bottles of Vinho Verde whilst full-blasting this bootleg of Spiritualized performing at the Gypsy Tea Room in 2003. (Well, I am.) Level 2 is when ERCOT starts to cut power -- at first, to commercial and industrial clients who're actually "paid to be dropped in a level 2 emergency." Level 3 is when you start to see interruptions in service.

​Which reminds me: Earlier in the day, Dallas Area Rapid Transit warned riders that "blackouts could affect our signals system and that would force us to operate trains more slowly." Morgan Lyons, DART spokesman, tells Unfair Park that a DART senior manager talks to ERCOT "throughout the day," but "they are random and rolling, so about the time we get something in place, there's a blackout somewhere else. The good news is they haven't done one that's affected us. But we have to watch and respond."

And while we were on the phone, moments ago, Lyons got an email from TRE staff saying that they're reducing speeds to 40 miles per hour to avoid problems like "sun kinks," or rail warping, which will cause delays as long as 30 minutes. Speaking of Kinks.