The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
A Texas congressman says it’s astonishing the Trump administration is calling on the American Civil Liberties Union to take the lead in finding migrant parents separated from their children at the U.S. Mexico border.
U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro appeared on CNN Friday morning.
Rep. @JoaquinCastroTX on immigrant family reunification: “The Trump administration told members of Congress … they knew where every parent and every child was located,” but now they’re “outsourcing” duties to the ACLU https://t.co/HBsIbe7fqD pic.twitter.com/Woy7ENdpuS
— New Day (@NewDay) August 3, 2018
The San Antonio Democrat says this shows the federal government does not know where every child and parent is located as they claimed.
“Number one they lied to us. And second they were so incredibly sloppy that they didn’t keep track of the parents and the children, so that’s a big concern,” Castro said.
At least 400 parents were deported back to their home countries without their kids. Both the Trump administration and the ACLU appear in federal court today to continue hashing out the reunification process.
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Balmorhea State Park pool, one of Texas’ most iconic swimming holes, has been closed since May, when part of the pool wall collapsed during an annual cleaning. Now, officials say they know what caused the damage. As Marfa Public Radio’s Sally Beauvais reports, repairs are expected to take several months.
After months of evaluations, Texas Parks and Wildlife is naming erosion as the main cause for the wall’s partial collapse. They say swirling water from San Solomon Springs has been working away at it for decades. Balmorhea Park Superintendent Carolyn Rose says the team of engineers and architects drafting repair plans has had to take extra precautions.
“We have five endangered aquatic species in the system, so we also have to make sure that while we’re repairing the structural problem, that we’re protecting those species and that they’re not going to be endangered in any way.” she says.
Crews will have to demolish and reconstruct the wall by hand. Rose expects repairs to begin in mid-August.
“I feel very confident that it will be open at least by next summer,” she says.
Texas Parks and Wildlife says the project will cost an estimated $2 million.
State and local officials are investigating what caused a series of natural gas pipeline explosions in west Texas earlier this week on Wednesday.
The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, says an initial rupture occurred close to where two pipelines cross. Each are operated by different companies. But still, no cause has been determined.
Five pipeline workers were injured in the blast and airlifted from the Midland County area to University Medical Center in Lubbock.
Three are in serious condition, and UMC Health System spokesperson, Eric Finley, says the fourth remains in critical condition.
“Our burn patients are some of the sickest we have in the hospital,” Finley says. “And so they typically have a long road ahead of them, long hospital stays, multiple surgeries, depending on the severity of the burn. So I don’t know how long these particular individuals will be in the hospital but it’s typical for burn patients to be in the hospital for an extended amount of time.”
Two firefighters were also injured in the blast but they were treated locally.
