Monthly Archives: December 2016

During the recent drought, my office heard constantly from people concerned about the lack of water in our lakes. But now that the lakes are full and people are enjoying their boats and beautiful sunsets, a lot of people seem to be under the impression that we are out of the woods. I don’t think we are. There is no doubt we have been given a reprieve, but there is no way to know how long that may last. Now…

The pictographs of the Pecos River have lasted millennia in a tempestuous desert, surviving mostly in silence. Now an archaeologist has cracked the code — and they can begin to speak again. September 12, 2012, was a long day, but a good one. For Carolyn Boyd it started with a 30-minute drive from her home in Comstock to a 265-acre preserve, where she convened with fellow archaeologists Mark Willis and Amanda Castaneda and left the road behind. From there it…

An application to build a controversial 11-story hotel on Spicewood Springs Road has been temporarily withdrawn, according to an Austin city councilwoman. In an email message to her constituents, Sheri Gallo, who represents District 10, said developer David Kahn made the decision a day after meeting with Gallo and her senior policy advisor. Plans for the hotel, which would have been located at 6315 Spicewood Springs Road, near Yaupon Lane, had alarmed many nearby residents who were concerned about traffic…

The big problem in Texas: no local species appears to beat crazy ants. Hoping to underscore his point about a new pestilence that has arrived in Central Texas, ant researcher Edward LeBrun pointed to a Mason jar in his office. The jar looked like it was filled with blackberry jam. But it was actually filled, top to bottom, with ants, roughly 181,000 of them. More specifically, tawny crazy ants — a bug causing such a problem that it has supplanted…