The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
They say that breaking up is hard to do – but I think we all know waking up is way harder to do.
That is unless you’ve got some pretty good incentives. Like…coffee and beer? Enter Shiner’s latest creation.
To celebrate its 108th birthday in 2017, the iconic Texas brewery has released the Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale. Shiner teamed up with another Texas brand for the coffee concoction: Chameleon Cold Brew.
Two environmental groups have put a Pasadena, Texas oil refinery on notice. Environment Texas and the Sierra Club have given Petrobras – the Brazilian company that operates the facility – the obligatory 60-day heads up that they’re going to sue under the federal Clean Air Act. Luke Metzger with Environment Texas says the type of pollutant they’re most worried about is particulate matter.
“According to their own records filed with the state, this Pasadena Refining Systems facility has violated its permits thousands of times over a five year period, releasing about half a million pounds of health-damaging pollution into the air,” he says.
Some of these particles are so small they can get lodged deep in your lungs. Metzger says neither the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality nor the U.S. Environmental Protection agency have cracked down on the violations.
“Unfortunately because we haven’t seen action by the regulators, we’re having to step in and attempt to enforce the law using the courts,” he says. “And so we hope the courts will order the facility to come into compliance with its permits and stop polluting the air and breaking the law.”
This lawsuit will mark the fourth time both environmental groups have sued Texas oil refineries over illegal air emissions.
The Dallas Public Library plans to preserve items from a makeshift memorial mourners created after the July attack in downtown Dallas that left five officers dead. Library Director Jo Giudice told KERA News in North Texas that people left almost anything you could imagine in front of police headquarters.
“Some of my favorite or the most meaningful are the things left by children,” Giudice says. “So there’s a green dinosaur. Ya know, probably something really well-loved and will be missed by the child who left it behind so it was a sacrifice on their part to leave it and that’s what I think this collection is about – it’s how they showed their love.”
Giudice says it’s important to preserve the stuffed animals and the flags, and even a tape measure from the memorial.
“Well, this is a part of history now,” he says. “While July 7 will never leave our memories as a tragic event – these items represent how the city reacted and how the world reacted really.”
Giudice says there will be rotating displays of the items in every branch of the library this summer. The long-term goal is to digitize the collection so people can view images of the items online.
