The historic freezing temperatures might be gone but many Houstonians are still without running water.
In a press conference on Sunday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said he believes the number of tenants and homeowners struggling is likely in the thousands.
Coaquies Davis, who lives at the Sterlingshire apartments in northeast Houston, said she’s been without water for about 11 days.
“I feel so frustrated. It hard on us and our kids. I’ve been keeping them inside because you can’t get too dirty if you can’t bathe,” Davis said.
The water issue at the Villas Del Paseo apartment complex in southwest Houston is too much for some residents.
Jaider Vera suffered significant water damage in her apartment due to a busted pipe and like others at the complex had no running water.
Dozens of residents gathered as part of a demonstration Sunday afternoon alongside Houston Tenants Union to protest the complex’s response.
“The tenants have unanimously decided that they’re not going to pay rent tomorrow until they fix the water,” said Dominica, a volunteer for the Houston Tenants Union.
Turner did not comment on the issues of each individual complex but said some of the issues are being caused by a shortage in supplies.
Oil refineries, chemical manufacturers, and petrochemical plants across Texas — mostly in the upper Gulf Coast — warned state regulators that they may have released millions of pounds of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air due to last week’s winter storm.
The arctic freeze in Texas claimed the lives of dozens of Texans, and more than 4.5 million customers were without power for days last week due to blackouts implemented by the state’s grid operator. Plants tripping offline in the extreme cold led the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to order power outages to avoid overloading the grid.
The storm and power outages also hit industrial plants, mostly those that produce products derived from oil and natural gas, such as gasoline, diesel, and the building blocks of plastic. Those facilities spewed 3.5 million pounds of additional pollution in the air during the power crisis, according to an analysis of notices by Texas environmental groups Environmental Defense Fund, Environment Texas, and Air Alliance Houston.
Industrial plants typically shut down in advance of hurricanes to keep workers safe, avoid spills and prevent even worse emissions. Many plants did the same ahead of Winter Storm Uri, but emergency shutdowns still caused a significant amount of pollutants and climate-warming greenhouse gases such as nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds.
During emergency shutdowns and the subsequent re-starts when a storm passes, chemical plants and refineries typically emit pollution well above what their state permits allow as they burn off waste gases.
Power outages and system failures also contributed to excess emissions, companies said in their reports to the state.
Nearly 200 facilities in 54 counties reported excess air emissions between Feb. 11 and Monday, according to the analysis.
“Texas is not ready for increasingly extreme weather, and the state’s failure to prepare is hurting communities, especially those near high-risk chemical facilities,” Elena Craft, senior director for climate and health at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.
Neighborhoods near industrial facilities are often majority Black and Latino in Texas due to the legacy of government-imposed segregation and wealth inequality, which in turn has resulted in disproportionate health impacts from air pollution for Black and Latino residents.
One study by the University of Washington and University of Minnesota researchers found that Black and Hispanic populations experience over 50% more pollution than they generate, while white populations experience 17% less pollution than they generate.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulatory agency, reported power failures at 39 of its more than 200 air quality monitors, including 14 in the Houston area, according to a storm report by the Environmental Protection Agency. The monitors were all operational as of Sunday, according to the TCEQ. The agency deployed additional mobile air monitoring vans to sample pollutants this week.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday for use in the U.S., the third vaccine to be approved since the pandemic began.
Texas could initially receive more than 200,000 doses, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, but the agency hasn’t received a timeline for when they would arrive. The company has said it plans to ship 20 million shots in the U.S. by the end of March and an additional 80 million doses before the end of June.
Texas received about 1.5 million vaccine doses by Pfizer and Moderna this week, including doses that had been undelivered earlier in the month because of the winter storm.
Unlike those vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s formulation is the first to only require one dose, and it can be stored at regular refrigeration temperatures. The others require two doses, and Pfizer doses must be stored at below-freezing temperatures.
In clinical trials, the new vaccine worked especially well in protecting recipients from severe disease and hospitalizations, but its efficacy rate of 72% in U.S. trials is less than its competitors, which were shown to be 94% to 95% effective against COVID-19.
However, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was tested while COVID-19 variants were becoming more widespread; it’s unclear whether the other two vaccines’ efficacy rates could be affected by variants.
Five million vaccine doses have been administered overall in Texas as of Feb. 25. That equals about 5.8% of the state’s population — a long way from the 70% to 80% that experts estimate is necessary to achieve herd immunity. It would require nearly 100% of adults to be vaccinated to reach those figures, according to census numbers.
Scientists are still monitoring how well vaccines prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and health officials advise those who are vaccinated to continue wearing masks, social distance, and follow other COVID-19 safety guidelines.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that he and other state officials are considering when to remove the statewide mask mandate and other emergency orders related to COVID-19. He said he would make an announcement “pretty soon.”
But even as hospitalizations and deaths have declined in recent weeks, U.S. health officials have warned governors to avoid removing restrictions too soon.
Those declines “may be stalling,” said Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a COVID-19 White House briefing Friday. The CDC has also continued to sound the alarm about variants of the virus that continue to spread in the U.S, he said.
“It’s important to remember where we are in the pandemic. Things are tenuous,” Walensky said. “Now is not the time to relax restrictions.”
Crime Stoppers and the Houston Police Department’s Burglary and Theft Division need the public’s assistance identifying the suspect responsible for Felony Theft.
On Sunday, December 13, 2020, at approximately 11:37 p.m., an unknown suspect stole items from a business located in the 5000 block of Westheimer Road in Houston, Texas. During the incident, the suspect forced open the cabinet doors of a kiosk and stole over $8500 of Versace sunglasses. The suspect fled the scene in an unknown direction of travel.
Crime Stoppers may pay up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, charging, and/or arrest of the suspects in this case. Information may be reported by calling 713-222-TIPS (8477), submitted online at www.crime-stoppers.org, or through the Crime Stoppers mobile app. Only tips and calls DIRECTLY TO Crime Stoppers are anonymous and eligible for a cash reward.
The language in this press release is intentional and could have legal implications. Please do not change the copy of the paragraph above.
Senate Democrats are seeking another way to raise hourly wages for Americans after suffering a blow Thursday when a key Senate official ruled a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour could not stay in President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 stimulus plan making its way through Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was considering amending the massive $1.9-trillion legislation with a provision to penalize large corporations who did not pay their workers at least $15 per hour, according to a senior Democratic aide speaking on condition of anonymity, though the details of the provision were not yet available.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday he would work to amend the stimulus plan to tax 5% of corporations’ total payroll if workers earned less than a certain amount. His proposal would also provide income tax credits to small businesses equal to up to 25% of wages, up to $10,000 per year per employer, if they paid their workers higher wages.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Thursday evening following the ruling he would work with Senate colleagues to amend the bill to strip tax breaks from large corporations who do not pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide incentives to small businesses to raise wages.
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled Thursday the provision raising the wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2025 would have to be removed and considered as a standalone bill or as part of other legislation. The senators’ proposed changes would also be subject to rulings by the parliamentarian.
The ruling is key because the COVID relief package is being considered under “reconciliation” rules that bypass the filibuster and allow a simple majority to pass the bill. Progressives who have been pushing for the $15 wage hike say attaching the provision to Biden’s American Rescue Plan legislation was their best shot because a standalone measure would require at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster.
Progressive House Democrats, many of whom said the $15 minimum wage was a key part of the relief proposal, expressed their displeasure with the parliamentarian’s decision and signaled they would continue to push for the minimum wage.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters on Capitol Hill “a tax break is just not a replacement” for a minimum wage increase, referring to the proposals in the Senate, but said, “I think that Sen. Sanders is doing the right thing by trying to include something last minute.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the parliamentarian’s ruling was just an “advisory opinion.”
“We had Black, brown, indigenous, working poor people who came out and voted for us. And now we have to show that it’s going to make a difference that we’re not going to get caught up in the tyranny of the minority that exists in the Senate,” she said.
Democrats were not alone in proposing wage hikes after the parliamentarian’s ruling. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Friday he would propose legislation to require corporations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more to pay employees at least $15 an hour.
Other senators have proposed smaller wage increases.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., who opposed the $15 wage, has proposed an increase to $11.
GOP Sens. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton are proposing a $10 wage but only if businesses are required to use the internet-based E-Verify system designed to prevent employers from hiring undocumented workers.
Both senators say their proposal provides a dual benefit for American workers: raising the pay floor for the first time in more than a decade while also ensuring that documented employees would be the beneficiaries.
Congress hasn’t raised the federal minimum wage – currently, $7.25 an hour – since 2007, even though a recent Pew Research poll shows Americans overwhelmingly favor an increase. Then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to boost the minimum wage in 2014, but the effort went nowhere. The House voted in 2019 to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, only to see the Senate kill the proposal.
Currently, 31 states have a minimum wage law that allows at least some workers to be paid less than $10, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. No state has a minimum wage at $15 or above.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released earlier this month estimated that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would boost the pay for as many as 27 million Americans and lift nearly 1 million out of poverty but also would result in the loss of as many as 1.4 million jobs.
Higher wages increase the cost to employers of producing goods and services, and those costs are generally passed on to consumers who usually react by purchasing fewer goods and services, according to the CBO. As a consequence, employers faced with having to scale back their output usually cut back their workforce.
Backers of the Romney-Cotton bill, called the Higher Wages for American Workers Act, say a $10 wage phased in through 2025 (and then indexed to inflation after that) would cost no more than 100,000 jobs and would raise wages for approximately 3.5 million Americans.
And by mandating E-Verify within 18 months of the law’s signing, they say the proposal “would preserve American jobs for legal workers and remove incentives for increased illegal immigration.”
For more than 15 hours, lawmakers asked tough questions about what caused the state’s power system to fail. The outages left more than a dozen people dead and countless homeowners are trying to fix busted pipes.
During the first day of hearings, Texas legislators heard from the chair of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick who said ERCOT did not fully understand that cutting power to certain areas of natural gas production was compounding problems, and there needed to be better communication about priorities during outages.
Craddick’s testimony countered ERCOT CEO Bill Magness’s reports that freezing temperatures and precipitation are what unexpectedly knocked dozens of power plants offline, and natural gas was hit harder than most. Craddick fought back those claims.
“When you ask if we have enough gas in this state, the answer is yes, if we can keep the electricity on,” Craddick said. “Time and time again, the number one problem we heard from our operators was the lack of power at their production sites.”
Magness said his team warned the power company about the damage frigid temperatures can cause.
“We saw the danger and we continued to amp the communications with the people who are really going to operate and manage the grid during that time,” Magness said.
With a tense day, one in the books, day two of hearings will pick back up Friday at 9 a.m.
February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year.
Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.
Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask-wearing, social distancing, and virtual schooling — were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19. A push to get more people vaccinated against flu probably helped, too, as did fewer people traveling, they say.
Another possible explanation: The coronavirus has essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs that are more common in the fall and winter. Scientists don’t fully understand the mechanism behind that, but it would be consistent with patterns seen when certain flu strains predominate over others, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan.
Nationally, “this is the lowest flu season we’ve had on record,” according to a surveillance system that is about 25 years old, said Lynnette Brammer of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hospitals say the usual steady stream of flu-stricken patients never materialized.
At Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state’s largest hospital, “I have seen zero documented flu cases this winter,” said Dr. Nate Mick, the head of the emergency department.
Ditto in Oregon’s capital city, where the outpatient respiratory clinics affiliated with Salem Hospital have not seen any confirmed flu cases.
“It’s beautiful,” said the health system’s Dr. Michelle Rasmussen.
The numbers are astonishing considering flu has long been the nation’s biggest infectious disease threat. In recent years, it has been blamed for 600,000 to 800,000 annual hospitalizations and 50,000 to 60,000 deaths.
Across the globe, flu activity has been at very low levels in China, Europe, and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. And that follows reports of little flu in South Africa, Australia, and other countries during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter months of May through August.
The story of course has been different with coronavirus, which has killed more than 500,000 people in the United States. COVID-19 cases and deaths reached new heights in December and January, before beginning a recent decline.
Flu-related hospitalizations, however, are a small fraction of where they would stand during even a very mild season, said Brammer, who oversees the CDC’s tracking of the virus.
Flu death data for the whole U.S. population is hard to compile quickly, but CDC officials keep a running count of deaths of children. One pediatric flu death has been reported so far this season, compared with 92 reported at the same point in last year’s flu season.
“Many parents will tell you that this year their kids have been as healthy as they’ve ever been because they’re not swimming in the germ pool at school or daycare the same way they were in prior years,” Mick said.
Some doctors say they have even stopped sending specimens for testing because they don’t think the flu is present. Nevertheless, many labs are using a CDC-developed “multiplex test” that checks specimens for both the coronavirus and flu, Brammer said.
More than 190 million flu vaccine doses were distributed this season, but the number of infections is so low that it’s difficult for CDC to do its annual calculation of how well the vaccine is working, Brammer said. There’s simply not enough data, she said.
That also is challenging the planning of next season’s flu vaccine. Such work usually starts with checking which flu strains are circulating around the world and predicting which of them will likely predominate in the year ahead.
“But there are not a lot of (flu) viruses to look at,” Brammer said.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo joins 99 other history-makers in “TIME” Magazine’s “Top 100 Next” series.
In the essay penned by former 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, he said it’s hard to imagine a tougher first set of circumstances to confront her first term of office, and the ability to expand Early Voting sites, which had tripled during the 2020 Election.
“[Hidalgo] has really distinguished herself and makes us proud—not just as Democrats but as Texans,” O’Rourke wrote. “That’s what leadership looks like.”
“Proud to represent Harris County on the #TIME100Next list,” Hidalgo tweeted. “Thank you [Beto O’Rourke] for the incredible words, and for all you’re doing in the wake of this disaster.”
As an expansion to the original TIME Magazine’s Top 100, the ”TIME100 Next” series is focused more on emerging leaders who are shaping the future from the present, wrote TIME Editor-in-Chief and CEO. Notable individuals who made the list included Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, talk show host Amber Ruffin, and country music artist Luke Combs.
H-E-B is going above and beyond to make sure Texans have food on their table by donating $1 million to food banks across Texas.
The donation was highlighted by Ellen DeGeneres during her talk show Wednesday, where H-E-B was a sponsored donor.
According to a news release, working directly with food banks affiliated with Feeding Texas, H-E-B’s donation will support 18 food banks throughout the state.
So far, the Texas grocery chain has donated 23 truckloads of food and $100,000 in Meal Simple meals to food banks, per the release.
H-E-B also responded to the ongoing water crisis in Texas by partnering with Zen Water and Florida-based Publix, who each donated 10 truckloads of water to Texas food banks this week. More truckloads of water are also being distributed by other partner suppliers, totaling more than 725,000 bottles of water.
H-E-B customers can donate to help other Texans with food or water difficulty by making monetary donations between $1 and $5 at the register, or donating online here. All donations will support Texas food banks with Feeding Texas.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Houston Friday as Texas recovers from the winter storm.
The president will also meet with Gov. Greg Abbott at the FEMA vaccine super-site at NRG around 5 p.m. Friday. This will be Biden’s last stop after touring several locations.
Biden is expected to survey damage and recovery efforts following the deadly winter storm.
White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki said this is not a partisan issue for the president.
“The president doesn’t view the crisis and the millions of people who have been impacted by (the storm) as a Democratic or a Republican issue,” Psaki said. “He views it as an issue where he’s eager to get relief, to tap into all the resources in the federal government, to make sure the people of Texas know we’re thinking about them, we’re fighting for them, and we’re going to continue working on this as they’re recovering.”
According to the White House, the president and first lady will arrive at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base at noon. Then they will make stops at the Houston Food Bank, Harris County Emergency Operations Center before taking a tour at the FEMA super-site.
Here is a look at their full schedule:
9: 40 a.m.: President and the first lady depart the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
12 p.m.: The couple arrives in Houston
12:50 p.m.: The first lady visits Houston Food Bank
12:55 p.m.: Biden tours Harris County Emergency Operations Center
2:20 p.m.: President, the first lady tour Houston Food Bank and meet volunteers
5 p.m.: Biden delivers remarks at the FEMA COVID-19 vaccination facility at NRG Stadium
6 p.m.: The couple departs from Houston en route to Washington, D.C.
Abbott said he will join the president during the tour to discuss several key issues impacting Texans.
“The first thing that we will talk about will be the winter disaster that occurred,” Abbott said. “…And then, on top of that, we will be visiting one of the vaccine super sites they have located in Houston.”
According to the White House, Biden will deliver remarks after touring the vaccination site.
Houston Police Cheif Art Acevedo told people to expect traffic delays throughout the day.
