Metro
Steel on Magnolia
Women own more than half the new businesses on the Near Southside.ERIC GRIFFEY
On a recent gusty but sunny Saturday afternoon, Magnolia Avenue was teeming with pedestrians. Parents were pushing strollers, dogs were pulling owners along on leashes, and buskers provided the outdoor soundtrack to the biannua...
Disabled and Discarded?
Danny Swanson says the school district got rid of him because of his epilepsy.ERIC GRIFFEY
Inside a two-story house in the Ryan Place neighborhood on the South Side, Danny Swanson slowly wheeled himself into his den. Awaiting his arrival were his two Scottish terriers languidly curled on a blue couch. The large but c...
Watching the Door
Two bills to limit cities’ power over the gas industry aren’t moving now — but they might.PETER GORMAN
It’s a truism of the Texas Legislature that killing “bad” legislation is as important as passing the “good” kind. Under that theory, it would seem that critics of the shale gas industry would be celebrating the fact t...
Home, Home on the Landfill
Thirty years of trash later, a Westside hill welcomes back wildlife.JEFF PRINCE
Westbound motorists on I-30 enjoy a lovely view near the Linkcrest Drive exit in far west Fort Worth. No, not the honkytonks, boarded-up liquor store, and adult video store whose big yellow “XXX” sign is missing half an X. ...
Persevering for Prairie
Part of the long-sought park is now protected.JEFF PRINCE
Teenagers from a Fort Worth homeless shelter climbed out of a van and looked across what seemed a vast prairie to their urban eyes. They were at the Fort Worth Prairie Park to get some fresh air and a change of scenery. Leading...
Sand in the Wind
A citizens group fears damage to human and aquifer health from a proposed mine.PETER GORMAN
A proposal by oil and gas giant EOG Resources to open a sand mine in North Texas’ Cooke County has a small group of nearby families and businesses worried that their health will be put at risk and their water supply seriously...
Fort Worth Way Out
Vasquez says power brokers are going after Hispanic school trustees. Murrin says they’re just going after everybody.ERIC GRIFFEY
Considering the Fort Worth school board’s penchant for melodrama, it’s no surprise that the race for the District 1 seat, representing the North Side, would ratchet up to near soap opera levels. Incumbent Carlos Vasquez cla...
Liquid Power
In the water district election, there are three seats at stake, four challengers, and murky rules.JEFF PRINCE
On May 11, three of the five directors’ positions are up for election on the board of the Tarrant Regional Water District, one of the most powerful public agencies in North Texas. How powerful? Water district officials in rec...
A Thorn for Trans-Canada
Damage to her creek has only hardened one woman’s opposition to the tar sands pipeline.PETER GORMAN
TransCanada, the giant energy firm building a pipeline from Oklahoma to the Texas coast as part of a project that would carry tar sands bitumen all the way from Canada, is finding more fight in some Texas landowners than the co...
No Sequester on Hunger
Meals on Wheels clients are feeling the bite of federal funding cuts.JEFF PRINCE
Automatic federal funding cuts known as sequestrations are trickling down and coming dangerously close to the stomachs of poor, elderly, and disabled Tarrant County residents who receive home-delivered meals. The measure that t...