Environment Texas organizer Jennifer Rubiello makes the case for conservation at a press conference this morning at Winfrey Point.

Policymakers in Austin, having finally come to terms immensity of the state's water challenges, are about to throw some serious cash at the issue. But the vast majority of this, more than 96 percent, is going toward building new reservoirs and pipelines.

Trammell S. Crow, among others, has a problem with that. He stood on a wind-blown Winfrey Point this morning, wearing a yellow checked shirt and loud, particolored tie that only a real estate scion could pull off, in support of a new report by Environment Texas calling for fully half of any state water funding to go toward conservation.

Crow -- who lately has split his philanthropic efforts between turning the local Earth Day celebration into one of the nation's largest and trying to boot illegal immigrants out of Farmers Branch -- was joined at White Rock Lake by SMU engineering professor Andrew Quicksall; Richard Grayson, a local fly fishing guide and Texas Rivers Protection Association board member; Jennifer Rubiello, a local organizer for Environment Texas; and Ordinary Citizen/Concerned Mother Tracy Wallace.

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City officials have made this much clear: a plastic bag ban, a la Austin and any number of California cities, will be coming to Dallas -- eventually. Just last month, assistant city manager Jill Jordan told the City Council that Dallas is "maybe a year or two" away from considering such a measure. Because it's been only five years since the proposal was first floated, hardly enough time to conduct the proper studies and stockpile legal fees.

Councilman Dwaine Caraway is tired of waiting. As the Morning News reported yesterday, Caraway has demanded that City Attorney Tom Perkins draft an ordinance "immediately." This after Austin became the first Texas city to do away with the diaphanous polyethelene totes, banning them from restaurants, grocery stores, and other retailers.

"We're going to deal with it," he told the paper. "It's something I think will make our city a cleaner city, and all the stores have to do is figure out another way to bag their stuff."

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One of the few areas of bipartisan agreement in Austin this legislative season is that the state needs to take major steps to meet the state's long-term water needs. The arithmetic -- exploding population + historic drought + increasingly stressed water supply -- is simply too stark to ignore. The momentum right now is behind proposals to set aside $2 billion from the state's Rainy Day Fund to pay for future water projects.

The consensus starts to break down when it comes to how much of Texas' water needs will be met through conservation. The state's recently updated water plan, which forecasts usage and supply over the next half century, is actually mildly ambitious on that front, calling for reductions in water usage to account for 24 percent of needed water supplies. Another 10 percent would come from recycled water.

That's the plan, anyway, but when it comes to what state water planners actually plan on funding, conservation barely registers.

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At the end of January, city staff arranged to have the entire City Plan Commission bused to three city-owned sites where Trinity East Energy hopes to drill for natural gas on parkland. This was so commissioners could see for themselves just how drab, un-park-like and eminently frackable they all are.

Tagging along for the tour was a contingent of local environmental activists, who hired a local filmmaker to accompany them. The footage was then edited down to a brisk four minutes and posted online by Downwinders at Risk. They dubbed it the "Dallas Fracking Mystery Tour." You'll never guess who does the soundtrack.

Downwinders' Jim Schermbeck said the video was created to show that the Trinity East sites do not resemble a West Texas oil patch, as was suggested at a meeting last week by City Council member Sheffie Kadane, and to provide an easy-to-digest summary of the Dallas fracking debate so far.

It does both those things, and it's worth a watch, especially if you haven't seen the Trinity East sites in person. It's always good to put a place with a name.

Last week, the number of drilling rigs operating in the Barnett Shale, the massive natural gas reservoir that underlies much of North Texas, dropped to 27, the lowest figure in a decade.

But the boom's not over quite yet. There may be less drilling going on at the moment, but that's more a function of natural gas prices that remain stuck in the basement than a sign that the Barnett is tapped out. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

According to a study by the the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology, drillers have so far tapped less than quarter of the recoverable gas in the Barnett. Still there for the taking is some 44 trillion cubic feet.

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Seathos Foundation

The city of Dallas is "maybe a year or two" away from considering a plastic bag ban, assistant city manager Jill Jordan told City Council members on Monday. First there will be a study to figure out its potential impact and exactly how many bags plastic bags there are in the city.

It might also be wise to develop a game plan for dealing with the inevitable lawsuits. Austin, which is set to begin enforcing its plastic bag ban on Friday, was just sued by the Texas Retailers Association, which claims the measure violates state law. In California, Oakland, San Francisco and other cities have faced similar legal challenges, most if not all coming from the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, which has a website dedicated largely to detailing the evils of paper and reusable bags. By STPBC own accounting, those suits have had mixed success.

STPBC's main strategy in the California cases was to have courts force cities to perform extensive, and costly, environmental impact studies it says are required by the California Environmental Quality Act.

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When city staff first unveiled their vision to transform Dallas into a "zero waste" city by 2040, there was immediate pushback. No one quibbled with the goal of waste reduction, but pretty much everyone quibbled with the way the city should get there.

Environmentalists critiqued the plan for putting off progressive-sounding measures like mandatory recycling and a plastic bag ban for decades hence and for including "advanced waste diversion," which is a fancy way of saying they're going to set it on fire. Business interests were reluctant to embrace a proposed requirement that they provide recycling.

And so, the City Council's Transportation & Environment Committee punted a decision on the Local Solid Waste Management Plan while soliciting comments at a series of public meetings.

What the city learned was that there are things that everybody agrees on. All parties are on board with increased marketing and community outreach, producer responsibility legislation (i.e. making companies offer take-back programs) and curbside composting.

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The Lawn Whisperer may soon have a new job: process server.

As it stands, anyone caught watering their lawns more than twice a week and/or during daytime hours and/or outside the official watering days ordained by City Hall faces a fine of between $250 and $2,000. As of last summer, the city had handed down slightly more than a handful.

But this is Texas, where a verdant lawn is a God-given right, up there with driving on roads uncluttered by bicycles. In other words, it's inevitable that some green-lawn fetishists will simply ignore the municipal restrictions (not to mention the fact that Texas is in a historic drought and facing a long-term water crisis) and keep flooding their thirsty St. Augustine, absorbing whatever penalty they have to pay on the off chance that code inspectors show up.

State Representative Rafael Anchia, Democrat from Dallas, wants to make the consequences a bit more painful. He filed a bill yesterday allowing cities to sue residents who ignore municipal watering restrictions.

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Monica Fuentes

Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen -- along with more than 80 other groups from across the country -- are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency's withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its fracking operations in Parker County, just outside of Weatherford.

Range Resources, a natural gas producer, was hit with an endangerment order from the EPA in December 2010 -- the first of its kind in Texas -- accusing the company of contaminating Steve Lipsky's well with dangerous levels of benzene and explosive methane gas. The homeowner was literally able to ignite water coming from a spigot on his wellhead.

Then, in March 2012, the agency withdrew the order without explanation, except to say that Range had agreed to further well-water testing. The company, for its part, has said the EPA realized its case was weak. The EPA has remained mum, though one of its own scientists wrote that more testing would be needed to prove the contamination conclusively.

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It's T-minus three hours until all hell breaks loose at City Hall, as the Plan Commission meets to decide whether to let Trinity East Energy drill for natural gas in Dallas parkland, and things are already starting to simmer.

Case in point is a letter sent this week to Mayor Mike Rawlings by state Senator John Carona of Dallas, who expresses concern about the gas processing facility proposed for land a stone's throw from the Elm Fork Soccer Complex and urges the city to reject Trinity East's proposal. (The Morning News provides a handy primer on the processing operations here).

"Considering the proposed facility's proximity to community centers such as the Elm Fork Soccer Complex, Luna Vista Golf Course, North Hills Preparatory School, and numerous others," Carona writes. "it seems only prudent that the Plan Commission suspend this proposal in favor of a comprehensive environmental study to ensure the health and safety of those who could be affected."

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