July 10, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

DALLAS—Texas has stopped inspecting 44% of the dams in the state, following passage last year of a state law that exempted most privately owned dams from safety requirements.

Now, as a drought dries up large portions of the Southwest, some dam-safety experts and officials are questioning the law, saying the dry spell is leaving webs of cracks along the surface of earthen dams that may make them weaker—and prone to triggering floods—when rains eventually fill them up again.

“There are dozens of dams out there, if not more, that potentially could impact people. But you’re not really sure until they’ve been looked at,” said John Wolfhope, a civil engineer based in Austin who sits on the National Dam Safety Review Board and who testified about an earlier version of the law.

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July 3, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo.—Amid the parade floats for local businesses and civic organizations here every Fourth of July, one group stands out: a wild-looking clan of scientists dressed in foliage.

Clad in outfits fashioned from the football-sized leaves of the skunk cabbage plant, they play an odd medley of instruments—trombones, kazoos, pots and pans—as they march forward, then backward down Elk Avenue, the main street in this Rocky Mountain ski town.

A group wearing black galoshes under their leaf skirts twirls butterfly nets in rhythm, like batons. One man teeters through the crowd in stilts. Some wear clothing underneath the vegetation; others don’t.

As the cacophony swells, they chant letters spelling out four words: “Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.”

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June 17, 2014, Al Jazeera America

UPPER LAKE, Calif. — The whitewashed, one-story office just off California’s Highway 20 doesn’t look like much.

But the building is listed as the address of at least four thriving financial enterprises. They are part of the multibillion-dollar industry of online payday loans: short-term loans of up to $1,000 that are sought by low-income people whose bad credit makes them so desperate for a cash advance they will accept interest rates that can exceed 400 percent.

And it’s no coincidence that the same structure also houses the office of the tribal council of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake. The Native American tribe’s lending enterprises have names like Silver Cloud Financial and Mountain Summit Financial, reflecting the Native American heritage of the rancheria, as these settlements are called. The U.S. government established them for landless Indians in California in the early 20th century, but unlike reservations, a single rancheria can include members of multiple tribes.

Tribal sovereignty allows the rancherias’ businesses to claim immunity from state usury laws, making them convenient shelters for lenders who want to evade regulators.

Yet little of the revenue that flows through these tribal businesses ends up in the rancheria or benefiting tribal members, as attested by the cluster of rundown houses nearby, where some members of the tribe live. They don’t look like villainous tycoons preying on low-income Americans. They look more like those cash-strapped loan customers themselves.

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June 13, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

SAN ANTONIO—Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is recovering after returning to the U.S. and conducting himself with “good deportment” as doctors and psychologists tend to him at an Army medical center here, military officials said Friday.

He arrived in Texas from Germany around 1:40 a.m. local time and exchanged salutes with Maj. Gen. Joseph P. DiSalvo, the commanding general of U.S. Army South, which is at Fort Sam Houston.

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June 11, 2014, The Wall Street Journal

DALLAS—Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who has struggled to gain traction in a state where Republicans have won every statewide election since 1994, announced on Wednesday that she was switching campaign managers.

Texas State Rep. Chris Turner will be stepping in to replace Karin Johanson, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic political operative, according to a statement released Wednesday morning by Ms. Davis’s campaign.

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December 17, 2013, City Limits

With more rigorous standards for the high-school equivalency diplomas set to arrive in 2014—and get harder after that—people are racing to prep for and take the test now.

Doug Saunders and his sister, Shatoya, never finished high school. Shuffled between group homes and guardians in New York City and other states—Shatoya went to 13 different schools before dropping out in 11th grade—both left school to start earning money.

Now, they’re looking at high-school equivalency diplomas from opposite ends. Doug, 23, passed his GED exam in July. “When I found out I got it, the feeling was unbelievable,” recalled Doug. “The door was wide open.” From here, he plans to get a business degree, becoming the first college graduate in his family.

But the high-school equivalency test is about to get much harder, prompting a rush for Shatoya, and others, to take it before the standards change.

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September 6, 2013, National Geographic Newswatch

Thirteen years ago, life changed forever for the residents of Halfeti, a town on the Euphrates River in Southeastern Turkey.

The Birecik hydroelectric dam opened in 2000, creating a reservoir that flooded most of the town. The government paid Halfeti’s residents for their submerged property, but people didn’t know how to invest the funds responsibly.

“We weren’t able to acquire anything good, we couldn’t use the money, because for years the people have been dependent on the land,” says former Halfeti mayor Mehmet Gökçe. “The land provided us with our livelihood.”

Continue reading “What Will Happen to Turkish Villagers in the Path of a Giant Dam?” →

August 22, 2013, National Geographic Newswatch

Since it was first proposed by Turkey’s State Water Works in 1954, the Ilısu Dam has had a troubled history.

In 1982, the hydroelectric dam was incorporated into Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP): a regional development plan consisting of 19 hydroelectric plants and 22 dams. It was slated for construction on the Tigris River, in a village of a few hundred people.

But controversy soon erupted around the project. In addition to the village of Ilısu, the 10.4 billion-cubic-meter reservoir created by the dam would flood 400 kilometers of Tigris ecosystem, displace more than 25,000 people, and flood 300 archeological sites, including the 12,000-year-old town of Hasankeyf.

Continue reading “Rare Footage of Ilısu: The Dam That Will Flood Homes and History Across Southern Turkey” →

August 6, 2013, National Geographic Newswatch

Almost nowhere in the world is human history as densely layered as it is in Hasankeyf.

Strange sights greet its visitors: thousands of caves carved into limestone cliffs, children playing on the remains of a gargantuan medieval bridge, the towering minaret of a 15th-century mosque.

The first known inhabitants of this place on the banks of the Tigris River in Southeastern Turkey settled here in Neolithic times, 12,000 years ago.

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July 15, 2013, National Geographic Newswatch

A mosaic of religious and ethnic minorities thrive in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Yazidis have lived here for millennia. A monotheistic faith with Sufi and Zoroastrian elements, Yazidis claim theirs is the world’s oldest religion. After God, they venerate an angel king who takes the form of a peacock.

“When Yazidi clergymen perform rites in this area,” says Sheikh Rasho Rasho Hussein, keeper of a Yazidi temple in the Kurdish town of Khanka Kavin, along the shores of the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River.

“They bring peacocks as a symbol of the religion. When they bring the peacock, people give offerings to the peacock. And when there are disputes, they solve them.”

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