WCS on Friday sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission notifying the agency of the company’s intent to seek a license to build a facility able to store spent nuclear fuel from power plants for 40 years or longer. WCS executives detailed the proposal on a Monday. The facility, if approved, would be the first of its kind and settle the contentious question of what to do with America’s highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel until a permanent solution is found.
Roy Gillean, owner of The Barn Door, stands outside with an old shotgun laid over his arm on Wednesday morning outside the restaurant. Gillean will likely allow concealed weapons but no long guns or open carry, for fear of making customers and employees uncomfortable after Jan. 1, when open carry for semi-automatic pistol becomes legal in Texas.
Officers here handle more calls than counterparts in at least six other Texas cities, including several Odessa uses as benchmarks. They also handle more than officers typically do in large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles — which many experts reference as model departments, because they are long established.
Here is a link to the Midland Reporter-Telegram’s coverage of Uber’s decision to leave the Tall City. Here is a report from the Austin American-Statesman about Uber agreeing in court to tough limits on background checks. Mayor David Turner said the primary goal in promoting the ride-sharing service, which already operates in Odessa with no regulation or fees, is to expand safe transportation options.
The vendor who sold the chicks to her, she determined, mistakenly sexed the baby birds a few months prior. Since it would not produce the eggs she wanted and it would probably prove a nuisance, and LaPlante said she immediately made plans to send the rooster to live with a friend in the county. But a neighbor beat her to it.
The patrolman who wrote that account was Officer Houston Golden, who reported he could not be sure who swung the first punch, “but I believe it was Rodriguez.”. He reported seeing Rodriguez on top of the man and hitting him with a closed fist before Golden and another officer could separate them. Rodriguez, 23, was placed on paid administrative leave last week, but that stemmed from another matter: the officer’s Feb. 1 arrest in Rowlett on a misdemeanor public intoxication charge.
Odessa police officers investigated a wreck in the 1900 block of West Interstate 20 — an increasingly routine assignment as accidents here surge with the oil boom’s heavy traffic. Then this accident became two, when police say a car driven by 32-year-old Jose Luis Fino of Odessa collided with the rear of a K-9 unit that was parked with emergency lights flashing.
About 40 percent of the 15,550 barrels found on the site contained some sort of liquid, often in containers labeled incorrectly or not at all, according to the two on-scene coordinators with the EPA who oversee the cleanup. Some of the acidic and corrosive material in those barrels remains unidentified, but most of the liquids, about 70 percent, appear to be “BTEX.”.
The site, about 4.5 acres at the intersection Market Street and Marco Avenue, contained about 15,000 oil drums in various states of disrepair, said William Rhotenberry, a federal on-scene coordinator with the EPA overseeing cleanup efforts on Tuesday. There are also open container pits, tanks containing unidentified material, stained soil from barrels that apparently leaked and a water well that Rhotenberry said has more than a foot of oily sludge on top of the water column in the well.
The committee addressed three of their seven interim charges issued in November by House Speaker Joe Straus, relating to the local effects of the oil bust, rising oilfield theft and the Railroad Commission, which will come under sunset review during the 85th Legislature in 2017. Brooks Landgraf, who said he pushed for having the meeting in the Odessa and Midland area, and Rep.
The price of oil has yet to find its bottom as a slowdown appeared under way. “History has shown us that operators will come to an almost standstill until the economics get back in equilibrium.”. Edwards, like many of his peers, said service companies need to cut costs but are deterred for now because of work already lined up.
Salary/Benefits: The base salary for sheriff is $82,534 per year, or $39.68 per hour. But as tenured county employees, either candidate would stand to earn longevity pay on top of that amount and possibly retain the step increases earned from their current positions. “I’m sheriff by 45 votes,” Griffis, the No. 3 at the sheriff’s office and Sheriff Donaldson’s chosen successor, exclaimed to a crowd of cheering supporters at a viewing party in East Odessa hosted by former deputy Pat Trout.
Instead, City Attorney Larry Long called the notice “adequate” but promised to improve notices for future meetings. State law grants some exemptions of requirements that public officials conduct public business in the open, and one of those exemptions is for “personnel matters.”. Per the Texas Government Code, governmental bodies such as the Odessa City Council can invoke the exemption “to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, dut- ies, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee.”.
The annual Odessa Chamber of Commerce meeting honors hundreds of volunteers for the organization and marks the inauguration of new board members, including the chair, who for the coming year will be Craig Van Amburgh, the president of CVA Marketing and Advertising in Odessa. “While we have lost a small amount of our stimulus funding, as expected, we have been prepared, and overall, we are delivering to our equity investors, after we sign our contracts, a stronger project today than we had six months ago,” Miller said.
The state saw a flurry of wind farm projects beginning last year before a wind tax credit expired in December. In all, about 7,000 megawatts of generation capacity is projected to come online in Texas by the end of 2015 — more than in most states. Most of those projects were in West Texas and the Panhandle, where the wind blows strong and often and a finished build-out of transmission lines meant easier access to the big-city markets.
The tires had been stolen off a trailer they use to for their work freeing equipment stuck in a wellbore. President and co-owner Monnie Sparkman said the tires would cost about $1,500 to replace — “not that big of a deal,” he said, but the theft would leave the trailer stuck in place and force employees to spend the time driving out to the lease, jacking up the truck and installing new tires.
Odessa American
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Corey Paul
City government and business reporter at the Odessa American newspaper.