The news of the Hill Country karstlands becoming threatened is disheartening.
Here in the Houston area, there is little regional concern for the environment. People protest hi-rise residential condos in heavy populated areas, but they don't protest hi-rise business towers there. Valuable lots have set vacant for 50 years, as some special-interest group claims anything built there will adversely affect them, or the land was contaminated many years ago. Hundreds of lawyers here make money on such land disputes. Very little has been done "on a regional scale" to prepare for the next Hurricane Harvey. The new interchange at Hwy. 290 and Loop 610 has been without trees for nearly 10 years now as is all of Hwy. 290. TXDOT might plant some seedlings there in 2021. In the past year here, over fifty new 4-story cheap hotels have popped up, as the cost of living in an apartment here has become unaffordable or not practical to "the new average people" ( people who work contact with zero benefits ). The good news is that electric and hybrid-plug-in cars have become a popular trend. New residential condos are being built downtown for the affluent working-class, which will ease congestion once occupied - assuming the owners can find tenants. Near or in downtown, there are 10,000 homeless people with no practical access to toilets. Imagine that going into Honey Creek ! Dumping toxic waste in the creeks that feed the main waterway, " Buffalo Bayou," has become a routine daily activity. Major industrial accidents at petrochemical-plants seem to happen on a monthly basis. To make matters worse, millions of people in the region around Houston, go to all-you-can-eat-buffets, so their excrement is twice above normal. All of that flows downhill - a highly misunderstood phenomenon. Then finally come extra urban sprawl, where new subdivision are being built on failed agricultural properties 50 miles from the center of the region advertising quite country living but with modern amenities. Some author in the 1930's should have written a dystopian novel portraying this 2019 scenario. People back then would have gasp in horror at such a book or movie as being impossible to believe. One weird thing, is that people are unlikely to waste gasoline here, as they are all saving their money now, as they all want to spend $ 1,300 on "Samsung Note 10+." Every day here in and around Harris County, we lose thousands of mammals and birds to road-kill incidents and nobody cares. David
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