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EAGLE FORD SHALE
RIO GRANDE VALLEY
No money for oil roads
Surge is not over Media may have left, but immigrants keep coming By JULIÁN AGUILAR TEXAS TRIBUNE
McALLEN — The media tent that once stood in the parking lot of Sacred Heart Church is
gone, as are the television crews and reporters who descended this summer when the flow of Central American immigrants illegally crossing the Texas border was major news.
Old ruling keeps counties from mineral rights By BOBBY BLANCHARD TEXAS TRIBUNE
South Texas counties scrambling for money to repair roads damaged by heavy trucks carrying oil field equipment have run into a roadblock: the state itself. Officials in many of the counties hoped to lease mineral rights beneath county roads and rights of way to energy companies, and use the revenue to repair those roads. But a 54-year-old opinion from the attorney general’s office gives leasing rights, and the revenue, to the state. That does not sit well with some county judges. If counties have to repair and maintain the roads, they deserve some of the royalties from mineral rights under and around them, said DeWitt County Judge Daryl Fowler. From January 2011 to April 2014, leases on DeWitt County property negotiated by the state’s General Land Office raised more than $8 million, all of which went to the state general fund, Fowler said. During that time, DeWitt County’s road budget grew from $2.5 million to $15.3 million. “We still have to maintain the roads, and in many cases we’re rebuilding the roads,” Fowler said. “The state is actually benefiting from the revenue stream. We’re paying for the maintenance, but we’re not getting any benefit from the production. Somebody is eating a free lunch.” Fowler and representatives from other counties will ask the next Legislature to allow counties to negotiate leases, or at least receive some of the money the state gets from leasing mineral rights around roads.
See ROADS PAGE 11A
But after a brief lull, the surge of undocumented families passing through a temporary shelter set up by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley seems to be rising again. The
spotlight may have turned away, but if the sense of crisis is gone, the people have not stopped coming.
See SURGE PAGE 12A
GUERRERO, MEXICO
THIRD PRIEST KILLED
Photo by Christian Palma | AP
The bishop of the diocese in Ciudad Altamirano said Friday that the Rev. Gregorio Lopez Gorostieta was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, near this statue, on Christmas Day. The monument is in honor of Mexico’s former President Lazaro Cardenas.
Series of attacks targeted Roman Catholic clerics By MARK STEVENSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — A priest was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, his diocese said Friday, marking the latest in series of abductions, at-
tacks and highway robberies against Roman Catholic clerics in an area of southern Guerrero state dominated by drug cartels. Rev. Gregorio Lopez Gorostieta is the third Catholic priest to have been killed in
the region this year, and the first to die since the federal government launched a special, stepped-up security operation in the area following the disappearance of 43 teachers’ college students three months ago.
The motive in Lopez Gorostieta’s killing remains unclear; Bishop Maximino Martinez said a group had been seen lurking around the seminary where the priest taught
See PRIESTS PAGE 12A
FALCON LAKE
Officials may raise alligator gar limit By SHANNON TOMPKIN HOUSTON CHRONICLE
The Zapata Times file photo
In this September 23, 2010 file photo, Zapatans enjoy fishing in the high waters left from floods at Falcon Lake.
Falcon Lake holds a worldclass trophy fishery for a freshwater species growing in popularity among recreational anglers, and it isn’t the one most people associate with the 84,000acre reservoir on the Rio Grande in Zapata.
Falcon’s largemouth bass fishery, which booms and busts with the reservoir’s wildly fluctuating water levels, is nationally known as one of the country’s premier bass fisheries — at least when the drought-prone reservoir is in "boom" mode. But a recent months-long research project, in part triggered by concerns about that large-
mouth bass fishery, documented what undoubtedly is one of the best trophy fisheries for alligator gar in Texas. And that says a lot; Texas waters are the nation’s last strongholds holding good populations of truly huge — 7-foot-long or longer, 200pound or heavier — alligator
See GAR PAGE 11A