Spring has sprung Houston - at least in terms of Daylight Saving Time. Hopefully your sleep pattern got back to normal last night. Apparently there is a risk of folks not sleeping enough now that daylight will be around longer in the evenings. Huh. We thought our sleep issues were due to staying out until the wee hours playing urban disc golf in Midtown. >> Lake Jackson teen awarded Silver Star for gallantry in......

Good morning, Houston. In case you haven't noticed, it's finally hot. We've had temperatures in the high 90s so far this week, and coupled with high humidity, they're making it dangerously warm — so much so, in fact, that we were under a heat advisory yesterday. And it looks like today's temperatures will be about the same, so remember to avoid heat exhaustion by drinking plenty of fluids, avoiding strenuous outdoor activities in the......

Good morning, Houston. Seems like everyone's listening to iPods these days, eh? And even if you don't have one of the near-ubiquitous mp3 players, all might not be peace and quiet: As the AP notes, iPod-related noise pollution is a growing problem. It can happen in several ways, including people who turn their iPods up to top volume and others who sing along with the music in their heads. Bbut there are ways to......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Good morning, Houston. We don't mind telling you that we really have no love for cockroaches, but we do have a little bit more appreciation for the little critters after reading the Chronicle's interview with the Houston Museum of Natural Science's curator of entomology, Nancy Greig. "They're neat," Greig said. "Only 12 out of 4,000 are pests." Ah, well, good. But why are those 12 always in our apartment? >> Perry: We need more......

Well, this is unpleasant: According to KHOU, the runoff from the last few days' rain is washing fecal bacteria from the area into the Gulf of Mexico, posing a potential threat to swimmers. Though it won't kill anyone, the bacteria could make people pretty sick, so advisories have been posted at a few Galveston beaches: San Luis Resort Beach Plaza Shopping Center 60th Street Beach 57th Street Beach Fort Crockett Seawall Park West Fort......

According to the American Lung Association, Houston failed a recent air quality test in the “Ozone Pollution” category. We know this is shocking, considering the poor visibility in Houston. So what does this mean… "This report shows that people in Houston are being exposed to unhealthful levels of ozone and particle pollution," said Michelle Bernth, vice president of marketing and advocacy for the American Lung Association. "This pollution is a very serious problem for the......

Mayor White traveled to Austin two weeks ago to speak to the state legislature about SB 1317, a bill that would prevent cities from creating ordinances that protect air quality. It was no secret that the bill was targeted at the mayor's recent move to minimize the pollution caused by refineries that lie outside Houston city limits. The bill, authored by State Sen. Mike Jackson (R - LaPorte), was passed by the Senate yesterday, despite......

If you're not already registered for CitizensNet newsletters, we suggest you do so. CitizensNet sends you periodic e-mails with city news that is tailored to your neighborhood and your interests. And, if you're interested in the environment, you'll now receive the city's environmental e-newsletter, The Environmental Standard. City environmental news and information is always available online, but the e-newsletter is a very convenient and compact medium for receiving it. This month's issue deals mainly with......

Mayor Bill White will be in Austin this afternoon to testify before the State Senate Natural Resources Committee considering a bill that would strip cities of their ability to create ordinances that protect air quality. The bill, SB 1317 was authored by State Sen. Mike Jackson, a Republican from LaPorte (surprised?), and its captions lets us know that it is "relating to prohibiting a municipality from enacting regulations on air pollution that apply outside its......

Good morning, Houston. The good thing about having a lovers' spat is that there's almost always someone else out there having one that's far worse — take, for example, the story of a Conroe quarrel that led to a woman ramming her ex-boyfriend's car. Thomas Young-Davis told police that his ex got upset that he had a new girlfriend, so she followed him to a gas station yesterday afternoon, backed into his car twice......

Mayor Bill White’s been trying to get the city of Houston to take a stronger role in pollution reduction, but it hasn’t been going smoothly. First, he faced opposition in the city council, and now, thanks to his plan to negotiate lower benzene emissions with plants in neighboring cities, he’s being opposed by nearby mayors. They say that he has no right to impose restrictions that will harm businesses in their cities, not his. After......

Here's another of those things that'll make us all proud to be Houstonians: According to an environmental research group, three of the five most-polluting U.S. refineries are in the Houston area. We guess our old line to cover for our pollution problem — "That's the smell of money!" — won't quite cut it anymore. According to the Enrivonmental Integrity Project, BP's Texas City refinery, Exxon Mobil's refinery in Baytown and the Lyondell-Citgo plant in Houston......

Houston is a big city with big industry and big city pollution problems. Mayor Bill White, unsatisfied with the pollution-control efforts of our state and national governments, has been trying enhance Houston’s ability to sue polluters itself. Right now, each time the city wants to sue a polluter, it has to get approval by the council. White wants the city to be able to sue companies without going through these steps, and also wants to......

Good morning, Houston. In these days of strange diseases, air and water pollution, global warming and assorted health warnings, we sometimes begin to wonder if anything's safe anymore. And the answer? No, nothing. Example: Today, nearly a million Easy-Bake Ovens are being recalled because one can get one's fingers or hand stuck inside — and slowly nuked. Of course, Houstonist understands the need for safety, but now we're afraid to make dessert tonight. Life......

Good morning, Houston! There's some good news: If you graduated from high school, you're already ahead of a third of Texas students. Of course, that means there's also some bad news — namely, that a third of Texas students don't finish high school. And according to statistics, the situation is even worse in the state's big cities: There, more students drop out than finish high school. Elleen Coppola, a Rice University researcher, said dropouts......

Energy is big business in Houston, but how we often produce it — burning coal or oil — is dirty business. So it's great to hear about local companies investing money in new, cleaner power-producing technologies, especially when their success is far from a sure bet. Thursday Hunton Energy announced plans to build a power plant south of Sugarland that will use two separate approaches to keep greenhouse gases out of the air. First, they......

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit yesterday against Lyondell Chemical Co. and two of its subsidiaries, accusing the companies of releasing harmful pollutants into the air and not doing anything to try to stop the problem. The suit says Lyondell, Equistar Chemicals and Millennium Petrochemicals released volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide from plants in La Porte, Channelview and Chocolate Bayou. "Texas will vigorously enforce environmental laws that protect the health......

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-backed plan to clean up Houston's air doesn't go far enough, according to a suit filed yesterday by a local environmental group — in fact, the group claims, changes in the local air-quality rules would actually allow industries to pump more smog-forming pollution into the air. The proposed revisions to the clean-air plan were submitted by the state of Texas and approved by the EPA in September. They shift the......

Looks like there might be a pretty important element missing in Houston's fight against pollution: federal prosecution of environmental crimes. According to the Chronicle, the last time prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office convicted anyone of an environmental crime on its own was 2004, when two Fayette County farmers were fined $500 for the illegal use of a pesticide. It's part of a downward trend in environmental prosecutions from the Southern District of Texas, which......

After about five years of work, the $344 million reconstruction of the West Loop is finally finished — and though it's quite a bit better than it used to be, it's still a freeway. That means traffic still backs up, there's still noise, hundreds of cars still spew pollution and nearby neighborhoods still have a dozen lanes of concrete at their back doors. Hey, that's not good, right? Well, maybe not, some people say. The......

The shot from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor SHerrington. As you can gather from the title, this was taken at I-45 and El Dorado Boulevard. This sort of long-exposure-over-a-highway-at-night shot isn't exactly unique. It does capture the bright, screws with birds, kind of light pollution we have to deal with. But that isn't what makes the shot so great. It's the fact that the photographer climbed out on the ledge to get the......

TxDOT has dropped plans to build 30-foot-high elevated frontage roads along the Katy Freeway between Washington and T.C. Jester, a move apparently driven by concerns from nearby residents about noise, pollution and aesthetic harm the elevated roads could bring. The proposed new feeder roads were part of TxDOT's $40 million proposal to create continuous frontage roads between Washington Avenue and Taylor Street — there are now gaps between Taylor and Studemont, Yale and Patterson......

All week, have you been longing for some little something that would gross you out just a little bit? Well, then, you're in luck, because we've got it: fecal bacteria at the beach. Yep, that's right: KHOU reports that this week's rains have washed all sorts of waste into the Gulf, and it's just hanging around out there, waiting for swimmers. The increased levels of fecal bacteria in coastal waters is caused by waste washing......

Though a study on pollution conducted by a city task force didn't really break any new ground, environmental advocates hope it'll be a big step toward cutting local pollution — and, according to the task force's report, people in east Houston need all the help they can get in that regard. The study looked at 179 chemicals released from cars, industrial plants, ships and small businesses and considered their potential to cause cancer, lung disease......

Crews are still working to contain an oil spill in Nassau Bay after a tugboat sank there last night. The tug, owned by Payne Brothers Inc., sank while it was connected to a work barge and leaked about 75 gallons of waste oil into the bay, which is near Clear Lake. The leak continued this morning. Response crews from the Coast Guard, Harris County Pollution Control, Nassau Bay Volunteer Fire Department, Kemah Fire Department and......

Turns out Houstonist isn't the only one hurting from higher electricity costs — the city of Houston's light bill is expected to increase $30 million this year, up from last year's $100 million (and just a couple thousand dollars more than our monthly bill — damn that air conditioner!). But the city has a plan to help combat its high bills: It's thinking of going into the power generating business itself with a windmill farm.......

State highway officials are accepting proposals for a leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor that would run from North Texas to Mexico, passing west of the Houston area and including links to the Port of Houston. The TTC is a proposed network of superhighways that will include separate lanes for cars and trucks, freight and passenger rail lines and infrastructure for communications and pipelines. The first TTC route will run parallel to Interstate 35 through Central......

No cause has been announced yet for a fire at a Deer Park chemical plant yesterday that shut down part of Highway 225 and injured one worker. The fire broke out in an aluminum handling warehouse at Akzo Nobel Chemicals on Battleground Road at about 3:25 p.m. and was followed by a series of small explosions. The employee, who suffered second- and third-degree chemical burns, was taken to the UTMB in Galveston, where he's in......

Sure, the Katy Freeway reconstruction is wiping out a lot of homes and businesses in a push to cover west Houston with concrete — no big deal. But when it comes to Memorial Park, some residents think the construction is going a little too far. Bill and Carol Ware have filed suit against TxDOT and the Federal Highway Administration claiming that the new Katy Freeway/West Loop interchange will violate federal protections against noise pollution in......