Environment Texas tested 61 beaches across the state. Of those, 55 tested positive for fecal contamination at least one day, meaning they exceeded the safety threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Eight beaches exceeded the EPA’s threshold more than 25% of testing days.

Those beaches include Cole Park in Corpus Christi, which tested positive for fecal contamination on 54% of days, Ropes Park in Corpus Christi (41%), and Texas City Dike in Galveston Bay (28%), according to the report.

Sylvan Beach Park in La Porte tested positive for fecal contamination 21% of days, and Galveston’s Seawall Boulevard at 25th Street tested positive 26% of days.

Nationwide, 55% of beaches exceeded the EPA’s safety threshold at least once last year, according to the report. Roughly 84% of Gulf coast beaches tested positive at least once.

Swimmers should check TexasBeachWatch.com for water quality reports, avoid swimming with open wounds and near storm drain outfalls.

For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting.

A flood of transplants helped steer about $100 billion in new income to the Southeast in 2020 and 2021 alone, while the Northeast bled out about $60 billion, based on an analysis of recently published Internal Revenue Service data.

In Waco, four years of construction just finished on part of the interstate. The Waco Herald-Tribune reported in mid-June that the final phase of construction on Interstate 35 in Waco could start as soon as 2024.

"We thought there would be this big break in between. And, you know, I think we're all just like, 'Rip the band-aid off and let's get it done,'" Baylor University assistant vice president of media and public relations Lori Fogleman said. "I think we all know our alternate routes. We know what the construction does with that, and what happens when you improve infrastructure through the city. I think we are all ready for that one last area to be done."

But as we look further south to Austin, where a $4.5 billion dollar project is slated to begin in 2024, not everyone thinks adding more lanes is the most efficient way to go.

"A boulevard with bus lanes, bike lanes, and some car lanes would actually move a lot more people," said Adam Greenfield, board president of the group Rethink 35, which advocates for a different use of the land. "Highways are actually very poor. Movers of large numbers of people because cars are very space inefficient. They lock up in congestion. That's a basic-level bug that they have."

Desalination is an idea that keeps reappearing in the Golden State, where overdrawn groundwater and shrinking reservoirs are critical problems. On a superficial level, it seems simple: take the salt out of the abundant salt water just offshore. But typical desalination facilities are big, expensive to operate, and environmentally unfriendly, especially when the resource-intensive process is powered by fossil fuels. The Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, for example, sits on 2.4 hectares of land and uses 246,156 megawatt hours of electricity per year—equivalent to the usage of roughly 23,000 homes.

Oneka’s experimental water desalination device isn’t like California’s other desalination plants: it’s a 6.5-meter-wide buoy. The small footprint is a bonus, but the device’s main advantage is that it’s ocean powered. As the buoy moves back and forth with the waves, it draws water through a filter and then through a reverse osmosis membrane, which removes the salts and other tiny particles. “Surprisingly simple,” says Smith.

Some excerpts:

Sales tax emphasis is the wrong strategy for the future. By 2028, every baby boomer will be over 65. Statistically speaking, this means that every boomer will have cut their spending by 40% on average. This is the generation most devoted to brick and mortar retail transactions. Keep in mind that millennials prefer to shop online and members of Generation Z are more than twice as likely as millennials to do so.

I could list countless lost opportunity costs of cities that instead choose to have large boxes remain empty or parcels undeveloped. The most common reason: the uses selected are the ones the market wants (storage, multifamily, or industrial), but are not boujie enough for decision-makers. Take the bird in the hand — pretty soon there are not going to be new birds.

City leaders need to understand other uses pay off better in the long term. Retail is inexpensive to build — among the least expensive. Often, we see small retail buildings cost $3 million or less. You can expect lower and lower ad valorem taxes as well as the decline in sales tax.

Multifamily, however, is expensive to build. Typically, the taxable value is $250,000 to $350,000 per unit, or more. The value of these buildings holds up much stronger than retail buildings, despite how much people hate on multifamily.

Houston leads the 4-game series 2-1 against the AL West leaders

Milton Freidman’s famous example of a pencil to demonstrate the pricing system and global free markets

Feel free to post and discuss anything remotely on topic.