The Zapata Times 8/9/2016

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TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY

NUEVO LAREDO

Two dead in separate crashes

One killed, four injured

Chapa of Zapata, Ramirez of Falcon, die over weekend

By César G. Rodriguez TH E ZAPATA T IME S

Two Zapata County residents in their 20s died in separate vehicle crashes over the weekend, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

DPS identified the deceased as Ozbel Chapa, 25, of Zapata, and Linda Ramirez, 27, of Falcon.

The first crash happened in Zapata County.

At about 10:39 p.m. Friday, a 2001 Ford Expedition was trav-

eling south on U.S. 83 when the driver, Ramirez, took faulty evasive action and lost control of the vehicle, according to DPS. “The vehicle went on a left side skid and left the roadway to the left, where it struck a drain culvert. The vehicle continued a left side skid on the dirt and began to roll to the left,” said Sgt. Conrad Hein, DPS spokesman, in a statement.

DPS said the Expedition ended upside down facing

west. Ramirez was pronounced dead at the scene.

She is survived by relatives and friends.

Chapa Services are under the direction of Rose Garden Funeral Home.

Webb County DPS said the second fatal crash occurred at about 6:30 a.m. Saturday in Webb County.

Chapa was identified as the driver of a 2003 Chevrolet Silverado.

Preliminary reports show that the Silverado was traveling southbound on U.S. 83 when it

went off to the left side of the roadway, “partially onto the grass median,” according to DPS. “The driver over corrected to the right, causing the vehicle to veer right into a side skid. The vehicle rolled onto its left side several times,” Hein said in a news release.

Chapa died at the scene.

He was a member of Zapata High School class 2009. Chapa is survived by numerous relatives and friends, according to his obituary.

Visitation was Tuesday at Rose Garden Funeral Home. A chapel service is set for 10 a.m.

Wednesday. Committal services will follow at Zapata County Cemetery, his obit states.

EAGLE FORD SHALE

COULD THE OIL BOOM HAVE CAUSED SICKNESS?

Gunmen open fire

By César G. Rodriguez THE ZAPATA TIME S

Cartel gunmen opened fire over the weekend on two bars in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, killing one employee and injuring four civilians, Tamaulipas authorities said.

The attacks on the bars occurred early Sunday.

Gunmen first shot at a bar known as César Palace, located on Avenida Leandro Valle and Calle González in Colonia Victoria. Three men were shot.

Two were inside the business while the third one was walking home.

Survivors told authorities they did not see who shot them but that the suspects were on board a sport utility vehicle.

A second attack occurred Gunmen continues on A11

GATEWAY

Cuate Santos / The Zapata Times

Rachel Gonzalez-Hanson was the keynote speaker at the National Health Week luncheon Monday afternoon.

Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News

Raquel Lara and her husband Longjino Lara say they have been suffering from health problems, especially Longjino, like nosebleeds, muscle pain and breathing problems. They lived near Kenedy, Texas across from where a blowout occurred at an Encana oil and gas site almost a year ago, but have moved to nearby Karnes City. Unable to help himself, Raquel helps her husband get ready for a nap.

Well blowout leads family to question life at oil patch

By Jennifer Hiller SA N A NT ONI O E XPRE SS-NEWS

KENEDY — Lonjino Lara suffers from a long list of mysterious maladies.

There’s no clear explanation for the vague symptoms: headaches, nosebleeds, red eyes, rashes. Also flu-like symptoms that aren’t the flu, like body aches and severe cramps in his abdomen, legs and on the sides of his body.

The Eagle Ford Shale oil field sprouted around his country home. It happened quickly, like wildflowers opening after rain: the third-fastest field ever to pump 1 billion barrels of crude oil. Only the Alaska North Slope and Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field have done it faster.

Lara and his wife, Raquel, live in Karnes County, at the heart of the 26-county Eagle

Ford, next to a plant that processes about 9,000 barrels of oil per day and may release each hour, according to its permit application, as much as 183 pounds of volatile organic compounds.

So-called VOCs easily become vapors or gases, may have adverse health effects and are included in things such as paint and cleaning solvents. Last year, a well accident across the road from the Laras’ released hundreds of thousands of pounds of air contaminants.

The Laras believe Lonjino’s plummeting health is caused by breathing noxious odors. Proving that and recovering anything in the Texas court system, though, would take them into what has been called “the law’s garbage can” — a place where few landowners find success.

Oil continues on A11

Health Center Week begins

By Taryn T. Walters THE ZAPATA TIME S

Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News

Raquel Lara and her husband Longjino Lara say they have been suffering from health problems. They lived near Kenedy, Texas across from where a blowout occurred at an Encana oil and gas site almost a year ago.

National Health Center Week kicked off Monday with a speech by a woman recognized on a national level for advancing the philosophy of community health.

Rachel Gonzales-Hanson, chief executive officer of Community Health Development Inc., provided the keynote speech at a luncheon hosted by Gateway Community Health Center.

Gonzales-Hanson holds the honor of being the first Hispanic woman to serve as the chair of the board of directors for the National Association of Community Health Centers.

She highlighted a need for Health continues on A11

Zin brief A2 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

CALENDAR

AROUND TEXAS

TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11

ASSOCIATED PRE SS

1

Observing at the Planetarium. 10 p.m.–2 a.m. TAMIU east end parking lot, 5201 University Blvd. There will be an observation of the Perseif Meteor shower. Free and open to the public.

Bring your own chairs, blankets or even a telescope.

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 10, the 223rd day of 2016. There are 143 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History: On Aug. 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed a measure establishing the Smithsonian Institution.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 1

Brews and Cruise Pedal Party. 8 p.m. sharp. Meet at Caffe Dolce, 1708 Victoria St. Let’s Brews and Cruise it downtown and zip along San Bernardo Ave. If you plan on joining the fun please make plans to arrive before 8 p.m. and bring your own bikes, helmets, locks and lights.

MONDAY, AUGUST 15 1

Chess Club. 4–6 p.m. Every Monday. Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally.

Free. For all ages and skill levels.

Instruction is offered.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 18 1

Cancer Friends Meet. 6 p.m. Every third Thursday of the month. Laredo Medical Center, A.R. Sanchez Cancer Center, Tower A, 1st Floor. Having cancer is often one of the most stressful experiences in a person’s life.

However, support groups help many people cope with the emotional aspects of cancer by providing a safe place to share their feelings and challenges and learn from others who are facing similar situations. For more information, call Nancy Santos at 956-285-5410.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 19 1

South Texas Food Bank Empty Bowls X fundraiser. 6–11 p.m. Laredo Energy Arena. Concert by Grand Funk Railroad The American Band. Tickets are $10, $15, $25 at the LEA box office or ticketmaster.com.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 20 1

‘Lucha Libre’ pro wrestling. 7 p.m.

Laredo Firefighters Union Hall, 5219 Tesoro Plaza. General admission $5 to benefit the South Texas Food Bank mission of feeding the hungry. Tickets at the door. For more information call the South Texas Food Bank at 7263120 or Salo Otero at 324-2432.

MONDAY, AUGUST 22 1

Chess Club. 4–6 p.m. Every Monday. Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally.

Free. For all ages and skill levels.

Instruction is offered.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25 1

Spanish Book Club. 6–8 p.m.

Laredo Public Library on Calton. For more information, contact Sylvia Reash at 763-1810.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 1

Doctors Hospital at Renaissance 11th Annual “Fishing for Hope” Tournament. Louie’s Backyard, 2305 Laguna Blvd., South Padre Island.

LM Otero / AP file

In this Feb. 11 photo, Dallas County Mosquito Lab microbiologist Spencer Lockwood sorts mosquitos collected in a trap in Hutchins, Texas, that had been set up in Dallas County.

1ST ZIKA-RELATED FATALITY IN TEXAS HOUSTON — Texas reported its first Zika-related death Tuesday after a baby girl whose mother traveled to El Salvador while pregnant died shortly after birth in a suburban Houston hospital.

The girl, who died a few weeks ago, had microcephaly linked to the Zika virus, said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health.

“We are devastated to report our first case of Zika-associated death and our hearts go out to the family,” Shah said.

Test results linking the death to Zika were confirmed Friday. The mother had

traveled while pregnant to her native El Salvador and returned to Harris County in her second trimester. Officials did not release her name.

The only other confirmed Zika-related death in the U.S. was that of an elderly Utah man who died in June. He suffered from additional health conditions.

Florida is the only U.S. state that has reported homegrown Zika transmission by mosquitoes, in Miami-Dade County.

Texas has reported 97 Zika cases, all contracted during travel abroad.

— Compiled from AP reports

Professors could be disciplined if they ban guns

Goat slaughter at school barn now blamed on dogs

Worker atop 60-foot stadium lights rescued

AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says university professors could face disciplinary action if they don’t allow handguns to be brought into their classrooms.

Paxton’s court filing this week was part of a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit brought last month by three professors at the University of Texas at Austin.

LUBBOCK — This week’s slaughter of 10 goats at a West Texas school district school barn, initially blamed on gunshots, is now being blamed on dogs.

Eight other goats were found injured early Monday at the Lubbock Independent School District Ag Barn. The slaughter came weeks after 29 goats were found shot on July 15.

HOUSTON — Emergency crews have rescued a worker who felt dizzy while changing some lights on a 60-foot tower at a Houston-area high school football stadium.

The rescue happened Tuesday at W.W. Thorne Stadium in the Aldine Independent District School as temperatures topped 90 degrees.

— Compiled from AP reports

MONDAY, AUGUST 29 1

Chess Club. 4–6 p.m. Every Monday. Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally.

Free. For all ages and skill levels.

Instruction is offered.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

AROUND THE NATION

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 1

Chess Club. 4–6 p.m. Every Monday. Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally.

Free. For all ages and skill levels.

Instruction is offered.

1 Cancer Friends Meet. 6 p.m. Every first Monday of the month. Doctors Hospital at the Community Center.

Having cancer is often one of the most stressful experiences in a person’s life. However, support groups help many people cope with the emotional aspects of cancer by providing a safe place to share their feelings and challenges and learn from others who are facing similar situations. For more information, call Nancy Santos at 956-285-5410.

1 Ray of Light anxiety and depression support group meeting.

6:30–7:30 p.m. Area Health Education Center, 1505 Calle del Norte, Suite 430. Every first Monday of the month.

People suffering from anxiety and depression are invited to attend this free, confidential and anonymous support group meeting. While a support group does not replace an individual's medical care, it can be a valuable resource to gain insight, strength and hope.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

DETROIT — Thor, Ben, Argo, Duke and Gimme have more protection to help fight crime in Detroit.

Those five members of the nine-dog Detroit Police Department’s Canine Unit were outfitted Tuesday with bulletresistant vests — a donation from a Detroit-based firm.

“They weren’t exactly happy or thrilled about it,” police spokesman Sgt. Michael Woody told The Associated Press. “They are going to have to do some training.”

The vests costs about $1,000 each, but were donated by Strategic Staffing Solutions, a consulting, staffing and desktop support company.

Detroit’s nine police dogs primarily sniff out explosives and narcotics.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 1

Cancer Friends Meet. 6 p.m. Every third Thursday of the month. Laredo Medical Center, A.R. Sanchez Cancer Center, Tower A, 1st Floor.

commitment to continue sponsoring the police department’s horse unit, including funding for veterinary bills, hay, grooming and feeding.

“We are humbled and grateful for their continued support,” Woody said.

— Compiled from AP reports

AROUND THE WORLD Russian opposition supporters protest new repressive law

1

Chess Club. 4–6 p.m. Every Monday. Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally.

Free. For all ages and skill levels.

Instruction is offered.

Robin Buckson/Detroit News / AP

Wearing his new, bullet resistant vest, Detroit police K9 Gimme stands next to handler officer Austin Carr, Tuesday.

There are plans to get vests for the remaining four dogs, Woody said.

“Every police department in this country faces budgetary constraints,” Woody said.

“When you talk about vests that protect our canines, it’s just not in the budget.”

In June, Strategic Staffing Solutions made a three-year

MOSCOW — About 1,000 Russian opposition supporters rallied in Moscow Tuesday to protest a controversial new legislation that offers new sweeping powers to security agencies.

The set of counter-terrorism amendments initiated by the hawkish lawmaker Irina Yarovaya has sparked outrage

among rights activists. Among other things, it introduces prison sentences for failure to report a grave crime and obliges telecommunications companies to store call logs and data for months. President Vladimir Putin signed the amendments into law last month.

Protesters denounced the new legislation as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to stifle protest ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections. The rally, which had been sanctioned by authorities, proceeded peace-

Ten years ago: British authorities announced they had thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage.

A suicide bomber blew himself up among pilgrims outside Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrine in Najaf, killing 35 people.

Saomai (sow-my), the most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades, slammed into the country’s southeastern coast; it ultimately killed more than 440 people.

Five years ago: Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said international forces had slain the Taliban insurgents responsible for shooting down a U.S. helicopter, killing 30 Americans and seven Afghan commandos. Country singer-musician Billy Grammer, 85, died in Benton, Illinois.

One year ago: A draft of a secret study obtained by The Associated Press found that air traffic controllers’ work schedules often led to chronic fatigue, making them less alert and endangering the safety of the country’s air traffic system. A power plant operator in southern Japan restarted a nuclear reactor, the first to begin operating under new safety requirements following the Fukushima disaster.

Five Detroit police dogs to wear bullet-resistant vests

1

Book sale. 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Widener Book Room, First United Methodist Church. No admission charge.

Everyone is invited.

On this date: In 1792, during the French Revolution, mobs in Paris attacked the Tuileries (TWEE’-luh-reez) Palace, where King Louis XVI resided. (The king was later arrested, put on trial for treason, and executed.)

In 1821, Missouri became the 24th state.

In 1814, Henri Nestle, founder of the food and beverage company bearing his name, was born in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1874, Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, was born in West Branch, Iowa.

In 1921, Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken with polio at his summer home on the Canadian island of Campobello.

In 1949, the National Military Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense.

In 1969, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were murdered in their Los Angeles home by members of Charles Manson’s cult, one day after actress Sharon Tate and four other people had been slain.

In 1975, television personality David Frost announced he had purchased the exclusive rights to interview former President Richard Nixon.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a measure providing $20,000 payments to still-living JapaneseAmericans who’d been interned by their government during World War II. In 1991, nine Buddhists were found slain at their temple outside Phoenix, Arizona. (Two teen-agers were later arrested; Alessandro Garcia was sentenced to life in prison, while Jonathan Doody received 281 years.)

In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the second female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were charged with 11 counts in the Oklahoma City bombing (McVeigh was convicted of murder and executed; Nichols was convicted of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison). Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, announced she had joined the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

Today’s Birthdays: Actress Rhonda Fleming is 93. Singer Ronnie Spector is 73. Actor James Reynolds is 70.

Rock singer-musician Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) is 69. Country musician Gene Johnson (Diamond Rio) is 67.

Singer Patti Austin is 66. Folk singersongwriter Sam Baker is 62. Actress Rosanna Arquette is 57. Actor Antonio Banderas is 56. Rock musician Jon Farriss (INXS) is 55. Singer Julia Fordham is 54. Journalist-blogger Andrew Sullivan is 53. Boxer Riddick Bowe is 49. Actor Sean Blakemore is 49. Actor-writer Justin Theroux is 45.

Actress Angie Harmon is 44. Country singer Jennifer Hanson is 43. Rhythmand-blues singer Nikki Bratcher (Divine) is 36. Actor Aaron Staton is 36.

Actor Ryan Eggold is 32. Actor Charley Koontz is 29. Actor Lucas Till is 26.

Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is 19.

Thought for Today: “About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.” — President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964).

CONTACT US fully as police watched from the sidelines.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who played a key role in organizing massive protests in Moscow against Putin’s rule in 2011-2012, said in a rousing speech that it’s time for the opposition to return to the streets and that “everything depends on us.”

Opposition activist Ilya Yashin described the new legislation as a “reflection of horror and fear of the government.”

— Compiled from AP reports

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The Zapata Times

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 |

A3

STATE Texas governor makes first public event since hospital stay A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made his first public appearance since being hospitalized last month with severe burns.

Abbott attended the groundbreaking Monday afternoon of a nearly $900 million new harbor bridge in Corpus Christi.

The project will eventually replace the aging hat-shaped bridge that’s a signature landmark of the coastal city.

Abbott didn’t refer to the extensive secondand third-degree burns he incurred on his lower legs and feet after being scalded July 7 while vacationing in Wyoming.

His office won’t say exactly how he was

Les Hassell/The News-Journal / AP

Mike Tucker with Eastman Chemical Co. describes a training panel to a group of pre-apprenticeship program students from Workforce Solutions.

Courtney Sacco/Corpus Christi Caller-Times / AP

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Harbor Bridge replacement project at the Ortiz Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, Monday.

burned.

Abbott missed the Republican National Convention and underwent treatment at San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center.

He was scalded the same day a sniper killed five Dallas police officers. Abbott held a news conference the next day but didn’t disclose at the time he was injured.

Dallas police expect $32 million in overtime this fiscal year A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

DALLAS — Dallas police expect to spend $32 million in overtime this fiscal year to fight violent crime, adjust for attrition and pay for extra hours after five officers were slain.

The Dallas Morning News reports the city had earmarked $15 million for overtime in the budget period through September. Assistant Chief Santos Cadena on Monday explained the updated costs to a Dallas City Council committee.

The projected figure includes more than $705,000 in overtime after a gunman on July 7 fatally shot four Dallas officers and a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer. The suspect was killed by police using a robot to deliver an explosive. Overtime costs include $200,000 for security when Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visited the city in June.

Cadena said the department lost 219 officers between October 2015 and the end of July, requiring officers to work more to

fill the holes.

Council member Philip Kingston said he was concerned that the committee wasn’t alerted earlier in the year about excess overtime spending.

A draft city budget released Friday proposes hiring 549 officers, including 200 new positions, and 50 civilians.

The Dallas Police Department currently has 3,380 officers.

The budget would give 5 percent raises to eligible officers, which is about two-thirds of the police department.

Industrial interns learning work skills in East Texas

By Jimmy Isaac L ONGVIEW NEWS-JOURNAL

LONGVIEW, Texas — Fresh from being laid off at Trinity Rail Car Co., 25-year-old Chance Freeman needed a job to support his family of four plus one on the way and a dog.

His search led him to Workforce Solutions East Texas last month for a Dynamic Futures job fair for young adults, and it’s landed him in what he says is “basically a huge blessing.”

The Longview NewsJournal reports Freeman and nine other people are in a pilot Young Adult Manufacturing/Construction Pre-Apprentice Course. It’s made possible through the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, signed

by President Barack Obama in 2014 and designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled

workers they need to compete in the global economy.

Over four weeks, participants learn to read blueprints and diagrams, how to become safety aware, about the principles, terminology and core values of manufacturing and construction industries, and more.

They’re getting paid 40 hours a week during their internships, and after a month, they’ve qualified for eight certifications showing their training in forklift and scissor-lift use, competent person/fall protection, ladder safety, basic CPR/first aid, fire extinguishers and lock out/tag out, plus manufacturing/construction training and Dynamic Futures Work Readiness.

“That takes you out of the big stack and into the small stack of applications as you get these certificates,” Freeman said.

The pre-apprenticeship course is made possible with involvement from several East Texas employers, including East-

man Chemical Co., Orgill, Stemco, AAON Coil and Closure Systems Inc. Other companies, such as Honeywell, Showa Best, 3M, Majestic Corp. and Air Gas, donated supplies and gear to assist in the training.

“It’s a joint effort in the community by Workforce Solutions, the employers and customers,” said Teri Tims, Workforce Investment and Opportunities Act youth program coordinator. “The employers are getting good, solid, well-trained employees coming in . that other entry level workers do not have coming into this industry.” Freeman graduated among the top seven of his 107-member class at Tatum High School seven years ago, but said he didn’t make the most of a full-ride college scholarship. He worked at several places, from food service to industrial services and data calculation, but nothing compares to the in-depth training he’s getting through the course.

Zopinion

Letters to the editor Send your signed letter to editorial@lmtonline.com

A4 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

COLUMN

OTHER VIEWS

Is there an app for looking up and noticing life?

By Roz Warren TH E P H ILADE LPHIA I NQUIRER

On a recent walk through my suburban neighborhood, I kept coming upon people who were standing on the sidewalk, gazing at their phones.

They’d obviously been on a stroll, like me, but they’d been summoned by their ringtones and now stood there, absorbed in their devices.

It wouldn’t be worth commenting on except that I came upon several of these frozen tableaus during the course of my 30-minute ramble.

I turned a corner, for instance, to find a couple I know, standing side by side, staring at the phones in their hands. Like a still photo in a moving landscape.

When I interrupted their phone trances to say hello, they explained that their daughter, on vacation, had just emailed them photos of the Grand Canyon, which they were enjoying.

That’s pretty cool. On the other hand, if I hadn’t stopped to interrupt them, they never would have known that I’d walked by. Because they weren’t really there.

Once you have a smartphone, you are never entirely there again. Some part of you is always elsewhere, either inside the screen, or waiting to be summoned.

So far I’ve resisted the call of the smartphone. I don’t want to be available and connected at all times, and I’ve chosen to reject all of the easy answers that will be available at my fingertips once I have one.

If a question comes up in conversation, unlike my friends and family who immediately dive for their devices and start researching, I’m OK with not knowing the answer that very minute.

(And I am very tired of listening to the world’s ringtones, but that’s just a quibble.)

I am off the grid. And I am increasingly on my own there. One reason I love Mark, the man in my life, is that he doesn’t have a smartphone either and doesn’t want one. When the two of us go for a walk, it’s about sharing a conversation and the world around us. And that’s it.

Most of my friends were bookish folks who joined me in scoffing at the phone-addicted. Then, one by one, they succumbed. My pals Julie and Rob, a bookseller and a librarian, whom I’d assumed would never get a smartphone, just got a

smartphone. They had a good reason. (Everyone always does.)

When they first brought their new phone along to dinner, they did what everyone with a new smartphone does. They enthused at great length about all the amazing things it could do and insisted that it wouldn’t change them.

“It’s already changed you!” I said. “You’re talking about your phone instead of about your cats.”

Julie ignored that comment and continued to tell me about the new phone.

It had features! And apps!

“I don’t care about what your phone can do,” I repeated. “I don’t want to hear about your phone.”

In a way, it was funny.

But it’s also two more friends lost to being 100 percent there.

You probably have a smartphone yourself. You may even be reading this on your device. I know I’m an oddball in my rejection of the wonderful world you live in.

I was recently waiting for a train. There were half a dozen people on the platform with me. All of them were intent upon the devices in their hands, oblivious to their surroundings.

It had been raining earlier and the air was still misty. Suddenly a huge rainbow appeared in the sky. Gorgeous and dramatic, it formed out of nowhere and hung there perfectly.

I was the only person who noticed it. Everyone else was happily absorbed in phone world.

I savored the sight on my own for a moment, then began tapping my fellow commuters on the shoulder. When they looked up, confused, I silently pointed to the rainbow.

Their faces lit up. One by one, they joined me in enjoying the sight.

The rainbow stayed in the sky. By the time the train arrived, most of the people on the platform were gazing it at.

And why not? It was a rare, and pretty cool, sight.

It’s probably inevitable that I, too, will get a smartphone. How can I resist? Uber! Real-time weather reports and driving directions! Plus my son and daughter-in-law have promised that once I do, they’ll text me all the time.

Once that happens, of course, there will be one less person around to point out the rainbows.

But we’ll all be too busy enjoying phone world to notice.

EDITORIAL

A national shame: Bottled water sales are up as Americans fear taps PITT SBURGH P O ST-GAZETTE

“Don’t drink the tap water.” Traditionally advice for Americans traveling to the Third World, that is now a sentiment that resonates domestically, too.

More Americans are opting for bottled water over what comes out of the tap because of concerns that aging pipes are leeching lead that sooner

or later ends up at the faucet. Scandals in Flint, Mich., and Newark, N.J., are partly responsible for heightened consumer concern. But crumbling infrastructure is a national problem.

Years of negative publicity about sugary drinks and industry marketing also help to explain why bottled water may overtake soda in popularity this year. Still, the falter-

ing public trust in public water systems is a sad commentary on the nation’s priorities. The world’s lone superpower cannot provide safe drinking water for its own citizens? This is the price we pay for allowing our water systems, roads and bridges to deteriorate even as we have wasted money on wars and other entanglements overseas, while allowing contractors to

COLUMN

The great affluence fallacy In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled

“

DAVID BROOKS

and hid from their rescuers.

Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.

Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”

I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

The native cultures were more communal. As Junger writes, “They would have practiced extremely close and involved child care. And

they would have done almost everything in the company of others. They would have almost never been alone.”

If Colonial culture was relatively atomized, imagine American culture of today. As we’ve gotten richer, we’ve used wealth to buy space: bigger homes, bigger yards, separate bedrooms, private cars, autonomous lifestyles. Each individual choice makes sense, but the overall atomizing trajectory sometimes seems to backfire. According to the World Health Organization, people in wealthy countries suffer depression by as much as eight times the rate as people in poor countries.

There might be a Great Affluence Fallacy going on — we want privacy in individual instances, but often this makes life generally worse.

Every generation faces the challenge of how to reconcile freedom and community — “On the Road” versus “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But I’m not sure any generation has faced it as acutely as millennials.

In the great American tradition, millennials would like to have their cake and eat it, too. A few years ago, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis came out with a song called “Can’t Hold Us,” which con-

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milk the insufficient number of projects that are let for domestic infrastructure improvements.

The national, state and local governments must infuse money into water systems and work to win back Americans’ trust.

Regulators also must keep a close eye on bottled water manufacturers to make sure consumers get the level of purity they’re promised.

CLASSIC DOONESBURY | GARRY TRUDEAU

tained the couplet: “We came here to live life like nobody was watching/I got my city right behind me, if I fall, they got me.”

In the first line they want complete autonomy; in the second, complete community.

Professionally, millennials are famous for bringing their whole self to work: turning the office into a source of friendships, meaning and social occasions.

Millennials are oriented around neighborhood hospitality, rather than national identity or the borderless digital world.

“A neighborhood is the place where you live and sleep.” How many of your physical neighbors know your name?

Maybe we’re on the cusp of some great cracking. Instead of just paying lip service to community while living for autonomy, I get the sense a lot of people are actually about to make the break and immerse themselves in demanding local community movements. It wouldn’t surprise me if the big change in the coming decades were this: an end to the apotheosis of freedom; more people making the modern equivalent of the Native American leap.

David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times.

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 |

A5

ENTERTAINMENT

TV executive predicts 500-show bubble destined to deflate

By Lynn Elber A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Television viewers know there’s a mindboggling array of shows to attempt to watch. John Landgraf, the chief executive of FX Networks, predicted change is coming but not until the number of scripted series peaks at about 500 per year.

With a greater supply of U.S. television than can be profitably produced, the industry is “ballooning into a condition of oversupply” that will likely peak in the next two years and then slowly deflate, Landgraf told a TV critics meeting Tuesday.

“I’m not saying that I believe we are in a bubble which is going to pop, causing us to go from 500-plus scripted series to half that number,” he said, but could dip to 400 or slightly fewer.

Scripted shows premiering this year should reach about 450 for broadcast, cable and streaming services and near or exceed 500 in 2017, in contrast to his expectation that it would peak this year, he said.

Landgraf did a bigpicture assessment of the expanding TV landscape last year, focusing increased attention on a world that’s moved far beyond the once-true saying that there’s hundreds of channels and nothing worth watching.

This has been characterized as a second “golden age” of TV, but the FX executive said even that is at risk because of the

Frederick M. Brown / Getty

CEO of FX Networks & FX Productions John Landgraf speaks onstage at Executive Session panel discussion on Aug. 9 in Beverly Hills, California.

volume of shows.

A key driver in the streaming sector is Netflix, which Landgraf said has premiered or announced 71 scripted series, a number he said excludes documentary, late-night or non-English language shows.

By comparison, broadcast networks including NBC, ABC and CBS air about 150 scripted series; pay cable is at 50 and basic cable at 180, according to FX’s tally.

Why Netflix is making “such an extraordinary number of shows, I really can’t tell you,” Landgraf said. Although he carefully avoided characterizing how the streaming service manages its level of production, he described the FX approach as a “nonindustrial, extremely personal way” of making series, yielding between 17 to at most 22 a year.

He did say Netflix takes a “secretive” approach to its business model. The streaming service resolutely avoids releasing viewership numbers.

Audiences overall are having trouble distinguishing the “great from the merely competent,” he said. But there is an upside for “storytellers,” the writers and producers who are finding more work, and for networks like his that take chances on showcasing new voices, he said.

Other topics Landgraf addressed: 1 Producer Ryan Murphy and FX have been secretive about the next edition of the “American Horror Story” anthology series because they thought it would “be fun for the audience to discover,” he said, with the theme, setting and era yet to be unveiled. He said he sees no “end game” for the series, as long as Murphy keeps coming up with inventive ideas and the audience is there.

1 Landgraf waxed enthusiastic about FX’s new comedy “Better Things,” about a single mother with a forthright parenting style from creatorstar Pamela Adlon.

Jay Pharoah, Taran Killam exiting ‘Saturday Night Live’ ASSOCIATED PRE SS

LOS ANGELES — Longtime “Saturday Night Live” cast member Taran Killam says he “was never given a reason why” he was being let go after six seasons on the NBC program.

Killam and fellow cast member Jay Pharoah won’t be back when “SNL” returns this fall for its 42nd season, the network said Monday.

Killam told Uproxx i n an interview published Monday that he was planning on making the upcoming season of “SNL” his final one before being told that his contract wasn’t being picked up.

“I was never given a reason why, really. I can

Killam

Pharoah

assume until the cows come home,” he said.

Killam speculated that the production schedule of a film he’s directing and starring in, “Why We’re Killing Gunther,” may have played a part because two months of post-production work on the movie would have coincided with “SNL’s” production schedule.

Whatever the reason for his departure, Killam said he has “no gripes” about

his time as part of the comedy institution.

“I set out to be on ‘SNL’ and I got to do that and I did very well. And I love and adore and will forever have close ties and tight bonds with the brilliant, smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met in my life,” he told Uproxx.

Killam performed several celebrity impressions on the show, including Brad Pitt and Donald Trump — although the Trump role went to “SNL” announcer and former star Darrell Hammond during the past season.

Pharoah was also on the program for six seasons and had the coveted role of impersonating President Barack Obama.

Zfrontera A6 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

RIBEREÑA EN BREVE CAMBIO DE DOMICILIO 1 La Extensión Educativa de Texas A&M Agrilife Extension en el Condado de Zapata ha cambiado sus oficinas a 200 E. 7th Avenue, Suite 249, Zapata County Courthouse. Tel.: (956) 765-9820. Fax (956) 765-8627.

FIEBRE DE GARRAPATA 1 Texas A&M Agrilife Extension en el Condado de Zapata está invitando al público a asistir a la sesión del Programa de fiebre de garrapata para el ganado vacuno, el jueves 11 de agosto, en el que se tratarán temas relacionados con la prevención y control de esta fiebre. Las personas interesadas deberán registrarse el 8 de agosto. Charlas inician a las 9 a.m., en Zapata County Pavillion, 405 E. 23rd. Ave.. Evento tiene costo.

BACKPACK BASH 1 La Ciudad de Roma informa que el Backpack Bash se realizará el jueves 11 de agosto a partir de las 9 a.m. en Roma Guadalupe Plaza.

Los primeros 500 estudiantes recibirán mochilas con útiles escolares. Evento gratuito.

DEPARTAMENTO DE SEGURIDAD PÚBLICA

Mueren dos Accidentes cobran vida de residentes en Zapata Por César G. Rodríguez TIEMP O DE ZAPATA

Dos jóvenes residentes del Condado de Zapata, murieron en diferentes accidentes vehiculares durante el fin de semana, de acuerdo al Departamento de Seguridad Pública de Texas (DPS por sus siglas en inglés).

El Departamento de Seguridad Pública, identificó a los fallecidos como Ozbel Chapa, de 25 años de edad, y a Linda Ramírez, de 27 años de edad, de Falcón.

El primer accidente ocurrió en el Condado de

Zapata.

Alrededor de las 10:39 p.m., el viernes, un vehículo Ford Expedition, modelo 2001, viajaba al sur sobre la carretera U.S. 83 cuando la conductora, Ramírez, realizó una fallida acción evasiva que hizo perdiera el control del vehículo, de acuerdo a DPS. “El vehículo derrapó sobre el lado izquierdo y se salió de la carretera hacia la izquierda, donde golpeó una alcantarilla de desagüe. El vehículo continuó derrapando del lado izquierdo sobre la terracería y comenzó a

Chapa

rodar hacia la izquierda”, dijo el sargento.

Conrad Hein, portavoz del DPS, en un comun-

icado.

DPS dijo que el vehículo Expedition terminó volteado hacia arriba con cara hacia el oeste. Ramírez fue declarada muerta en el lugar de los hechos.

Le sobreviven familiares y amigos. Un servicio religioso se llevará a cabo hoy a las 10 a.m.

Después el cortejo fúnebre partirá al Cementerio del Condado de Zapata para continuar con el sepelio.

Condado de Webb DPS dijo que el segundo accidente fatal ocurRamírez rió alrededor de las 6:30 a.m., del sábado en el Condado de Webb.

Chapa fue identificado como el conductor de un vehículo Chevrolet Silverado, modelo 2003.

Reportes preliminares muestran que la Silverado viajaba hacia el sur sobre la Carretera U.S. 83 cuando se salió del camino hacia la izquiera, “parcialmente sobre el camellón de hierba”, de acuerdo a DPS. “El conductor corrigió

LIFE CHOICES UNLIMITED, INC.

TAMAULIPAS

REUNIÓN DE PADRES

TORNEO DE PESCA 1 La Cámara de Comercio del Condado de Zapata invita al tradicional “Torneo anual de pesca para niños por el regreso a clases”, que se llevará a cabo el sábado 20 de agosto en Bravo Park de 7 a.m. a 3 p.m. El registro inicia a las 7 a.m..

Evento dirigido a menores de 3 a 12 años. Mayores informes en (956) 765-487.

BAILE PARA RECAUDACIÓN DE FONDOS 1 La corporación de IBC Bank invita a baile en beneficio del UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. El evento se realizará el 27 de agosto a partir de las 8 p.m. en Zapata Community Center. Evento tiene costo.

Incautan gasolina en Río Bravo E SPECIAL PARA TIEMP O DE ZAPATA

ACADEMIA PARA PADRES 1 Zapata County ISD invita a los padres de estudiantes desde Prekinder hasta 12avo. Grado a la Academia para Padres que se llevará a cabo el jueves 18 de agosto, de 5 p.m. a 7 p.m. en las instalaciones de Zapata High School, 2009 State Highway 16.

Todos los participantes recibirán una caja de útiles escolares mientras duren las existencias.

INICIO DE CLASES 1 Zapata County ISD informa que el primer día de clases para el ciclo escolar 20162017 para todos los grados escolares será el 22 de agosto.

El horario de entrada para primaria y secundaria será a las 7:45 a.m., mientras que para preparatoria será a partir de las 8 a.m. El horario de salida para los estudiantes de cada institución será como sigue: primaria, 3:15 p.m; secundaria, 3:23 p.m; y, preparatoria, 3:35 p.m. El desayuno será servido a partir de las 7: 15 en los tres niveles escolares.

hacia la derecha, causando que el vehículo girara a la derecha en un deslizamiento lateral. El vehículo volcó sobre su lado izquierdo varias ocasiones”, dijo Hein en un comunicado de prensa.

Chapa murió en el lugar del accidente.

Se graduó de Zapata High School, pertenecía a la generación 2009. Le sobreviven numerosos familiares y amigos, de acuerdo a su obituario.

Los servicios fúnebres se realizaron en Rose Garden Funeral Home.

Un servicio religioso se ha programado para las 10 a.m., el día de hoy.

Posteriormente se procederá a su entierro, de acuerdo a su obituario.

Foto de cortesía | Life Choices Unlimited, Inc.

Silvia Everett, supervisora regional de Life Choices Unlimited Inc., se reunió en la Biblioteca Pública del Condado de Zapata Olga V. Figueroa, el lunes, con padres de familia y cuidadores de clientes de su institución para discutir los servicios que ofrece el programa. Life Choices Unlimited Inc., es un proveedor de servicios para personas con necesidades especiales que tiene el objetivo de brindar oportunidad de alcanzar sus sueños a través de identificar y satisfacer sus necesidades individuales en el ambiente de su elección dentro de su comunidad.

CD. VICTORIA, México – El Grupo de Coordinación Tamaulipas, informó que el martes, en el municipio de Río Bravo, policías estatales de Fuerza Tamaulipas aseguraron 300 litros de gasolina que se comercializaban de manera prohibida en la vía pública.

Esto ocurrió durante un recorrido de seguridad y vigilancia por la colonia Hijos de Ejidatarios, donde detectaron en el cruce de las calles Jalapa y Guanajuato una camioneta Chevrolet doble cabina, color negro, en cuya caja traía un contenedor con el hidrocarburo.

Al momento de la revisión no se encontró a nadie al frente del vehículo ni de la venta del hidrocarburo robado.

El vehículo y el contenedor con el combustible fueron puestos a disposición del Agente del Ministerio Público, quien se hará cargo de emprender la investigación correspondiente.

COLUMNA

Buscaban sitios claves para rodar película Por Enrique T. de la Garza E SPECIAL PARA TIEMP O DE ZAPATA

Un día conocí a Lou Stroller, productor ejecutivo de la película Eddie Macon's Run de Universal Pictures y a Jeff Kanew, director de la película. Después de las introducciones de rigor salimos a recorrer Laredo. En el camino, Stroller me contó la historia.

“La película que haremos está basada en un libro escrito por James McLendon. Él vino a Laredo los fines de semana y se hospedó en el hotel La Posada para

escribir su libro titulado 'Eddie Macon's Run'”, señaló Stroller.

Kanew dijo que se trataba de un hombre joven llamado Eddie Macon, interpretado por John Schneider de los Duques de Hazzard, quien fue falsamente acusado de algunos crímenes y enviado a la prisión de Huntsville.

“Durante un rodeo, Eddie escapa y se dirige hacia el sur, hacia la frontera con México. Él viajaría desde Huntsville a Laredo. Su objetivo final era cruzar hacia México en la frontera con Laredo”, expresó Kanew.

Ellos estaban interesa-

Marla Youngblood | Foto de cortesía

En la foto de archivo aparece el equipo de producción de la película "Eddie Macon's Run", filmada en Laredo, el año de 1982.

dos en visitar cinco lugares que serían sitios clave para filmar escenas de la película: un lugar de rodeo, la cárcel, el hotel La Posada, un cuerpo de agua - como un lago o un arroyo -, el cementerio,y una colina o una montaña en el campo.

Entonces los llevé a los terrenos de L.I.F.E.

Downs, el Lago Casa Blanca, el cementerio, la cárcel y a una colina en la carretera 83, por Mines Road cercano al Puente Colombia.

Al terminar nuestro recorrido agradecieron mis atenciones y dijeron que se dirigirían al Valle a ver otras opciones. “¿Qué? ¿Por qué? ¡No

pueden hacer eso! Laredo tiene todo lo que necesitan para hacer la película ya que el libro fue escrito en Laredo”, repliqué.

Entonces les pregunté que si habían bebido agua durante su estancia en Laredo. Stroller contestó que sí.

“Entonces regresarán, Lou”, dije y me despedí.

Sports&Outdoors THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 |

A7

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: TEXAS RANGERS

Report: Neck injury will end Fielder's career Rangers slugger to announce retirement

By Nick Moyle SA N A NT ONI O E XPRE SS-NEWS

The Texas Rangers are expected to call a press conference Wednesday to announce designated hitter Prince Fielder can no longer play.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports first reported the announcement.

Fielder, 32, was diagnosed with a herniation in the C4-C5 area of his neck in July, nearly the same area where he underwent neck surgery in 2014. He underwent spinal cord fusion surgery on July 29, ending his 2016 season.

Though not officially retired, doctors have declared Fielder medically disabled and too much of a risk to play.

"It's a little bit devastating, to be honest," Adrian Beltre told the Dallas

Morning News prior to Fielder’s surgery. "Prince has been a guy that we have come to count on. I know he's struggled some with results, but he seemed to show a lot of progress. He's important to this team. It's never a good time to hear this, but the way we've been playing it's worse. We just have to deal with it, stay confident and get the job done."

Fielder is currently in the fifth year of a nineyear, $214 million contract he signed with the Detroit Tigers in 2012. Fielder was traded to the Rangers for second baseman Ian Kinsler and $30 million -- $4 million per season over the life of the contract – prior to the 2014 season.

Cecil’s son never lived up to the deal, compiling a .269 batting average, .410 slugging percentage, 34

Chuck Burton / Associated Press file

David Banks / Associated Press file

A person with direct knowledge of the medical decision says Rangers designated hitter Prince Fielder will have to quit playing baseball after his second neck surgery.

home runs and 158 runs batted in three seasons with the Rangers.

He was named an AllStar for the sixth time in 2015, finishing the year with 23 home runs, 98 RBIs and a .305 batting average. But Fielder missed 40 percent of the Rangers’ regular-season games and was largely sapped of his once-prodigious power.

His best years came in

Milwaukee, where he was twice a top-five finisher in MVP voting. He led the majors with 50 home runs in 2007, his first All-Star season, and hit at least 30 in six consecutive seasons from 2007 to 2012.

Fielder finishes his career with 319 home runs – oddly, the exact total his father finished with. nmoyle@expressnews.net Twitter: @NRMoyle

Tebow will try to make move to play professional baseball Not having much luck getting back into the NFL, former Heisman-winning quarterback Tim Tebow will try to make the switch to baseball and break into the professional ranks.

NCAA: TCU HORNED FROGS

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: HOUSTON TEXANS

TEXANS’ SAVAGE SETS EGO ASIDE SEEKING BACKUP SPOT

Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press file

TCU head coach Gary Patterson signed a contract extension through the 2022 season.

TCU extends Patterson to 2022, gives $4.7M raise

By Carlos Mendez FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

Aiming to secure its most successful football coach ever, TCU has awarded Gary Patterson a contract extension to 2022 that also makes him one of the highest-paid coaches in the country.

The extension announced Tuesday takes Patterson, the school’s football victories leader, to age 62 in Fort Worth, Texas. A person close to Patterson said he will be paid $4.7 million annually with incentives, such as making the College Football Playoff or winning the coming Big 12 championship game, which could Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle push him over $5 million.

He was making $3.95 After Houston signed Brock Osweiler in the offseason, Texans quarterback Tom Savage is now focused on winning the backup job in 2016 over Brandon Weeden. million per year according to TCU’s most recent public tax filing.

"He deserves it," athletic director Chris Del A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS season ended, but injured Conte said. "He’s arguably fourth-round pick, 135th good as possible, and reserve meant Savage overall, out of Pittsburgh. one of the best coaches in make the team, to be wasn’t available. He He backed up Ryan America, we’re very forhonest with you.”

HOUSTON — Before watched as the Texans Fitzpatrick and Ryan tunate to have him, and Savage is competing to all the offseason renovaneeded four different Mallett during the 2014 we wanted to make sure be the backup quartertions and before Brock starting quarterbacks to the public knew, and that back, and as he does it, he season. He played only Osweiler became the new get through the season. once, entering a game he knew, that he’s appresaid he has put any ego hope for the Texans’ ofAnd when that season against the Indianapolis ciated for his efforts completely aside. He’s fense, a different quarterended with a 30-0 playoff here."

Colts because Fitzpatrick sharing what he knows back sought that job. loss to the Kansas City broke his leg. He strugPatterson is TCU’s with Osweiler and his Tom Savage wanted to Chiefs, Savage declared winningest football coach, be the starter and thought knowledge has helped the gled, and spent the offhis intention to be the season haunted by his with a record of 143-47. At starting quarterback in he’d get that opportunity.

Texans’ starter in 2016. $4.7 million, he would his quest to learn his new performance. Savage also That changed with the “They can draft 12 suffered a knee injury in have been in the top 10 offense quickly. Even arrival of Osweiler in free quarterbacks,” Savage that game. nationally in salary, judgwithout being the starter, agency, but Savage is not said in January. “I am He entered the 2015 ing from data collected by Savage is helping to stabipouting about it. In fact, going to be ready to go.” offseason ready for anUSA Today. lize a position that’s been he has tried to help.

Two months later, the other chance, this time Patterson is a 20-time volatile in Houston for “Coach is going to Texans dealt Savage anbacking up Brian Hoyer coach of the year award several years. make decisions,” Savage other blow by signing and Mallett. But Savage winner, most recently in “It takes a while for said. “He’s got to feed his suffered a shoulder injury Osweiler. But when Os2014, when he won honthat position,” coach Bill family as well. He’s going weiler invited him to and went on season-endors from the Associated O’Brien said. “The only to do whatever he thinks ing injured reserve before Arizona for a set of play- Press, Big 12, the Amerthing Tom needs is an is best for this team. I er-led workouts with Week 1. ican Football Coaches opportunity.” can’t worry about that. I their receivers, Savage His shoulder actually Association, The Sporting Savage came to the have to go to there and didn’t hesitate to accept. healed long before the News and Eddie Robtry and make this team as Texans as a project, a

Savage aims for backup spot behind Osweiler

inson, Walter Camp and "Bear" Bryant awards.

Under Patterson, TCU has won 10 games or more in 10 of the past 14 seasons. Before Patterson, TCU had four 10-win seasons total.

The school erected a statue of Patterson in April, putting him alongside TCU legends Dutch Meyer and Davey O’Brien.

Asked if TCU was concerned Patterson might be looking at other jobs, Del Conte said, "No, it had nothing to do with that. At the end of the day, it just goes back to like it did with baseball or any other program. We sit down and evaluate. This has been in the works for a long time. We just worked out the particulars and ensured that coach Patterson is a Frog until he desires to retire."

Baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle also received a contract extension this year.

Patterson, a Rozel, Kan., native, spent his first three seasons at TCU as defensive coordinator, giving him almost 20 years in Fort Worth, Texas.

TCU, coming off backto-back top-10 finishes in the coaches and media polls, starts the season Sept. 3 against South Dakota State. The Frogs are 23-3 the past two seasons. They opened at No. 14 in the USA Today Coaches Poll released last week.

In a tweet, Fox Sports reporter Bruce Feldman noted Patterson’s five top-10 finishes in the past eight seasons.

A8 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

NATIONAL

Trump ignites new firestorm in comment

By Josh Lederman and Catherine Lucey A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Donald Trump ignited a fresh political firestorm Tuesday by declaring gun rights supporters might find a way to stop Hillary Clinton if she defeats him and then names anti-gun Supreme Court justices.

Democrats pounced, accusing him of openly encouraging violence against his opponent.

The Republican presidential nominee has been working this week to move past distracting campaign disputes, but once again he put himself at the center of a blazing controversy.

First, he falsely claimed that Clinton, his Democratic opponent, wants to “essentially abolish the Second Amendment.” She has said explicitly and repeatedly that she supports the Second Amendment right to own guns, though she does back some stricter gun control measures.

Trump then noted the power Clinton would have to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.

“By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.

Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, right, meets with officers at the Baltimore Police Department's Central District on May 5, 2015.

Evan Vucci / AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C.

Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.

“But I’ll tell you what.

That will be a horrible day.”

Trump’s campaign sought to quell the controversy with a statement that blamed the “dishonest media” for misinterpretation. And Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said Trump was talking about the clear election choice for pro-gun voters, not encouraging violence against Clinton.

“Of course not,” Pence said in an interview with NBC Philadelphia. “Donald Trump is urging people around this country to act consistent with their

Clinton urges emergency action on Zika in Florida

By Josh Lederman and Catherine Lucey A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

MIAMI — Urging Congress to cut short its summer recess, Hillary Clinton called for emergency public health action Tuesday as she visited a Miami neighborhood dealing with the first U.S. outbreak of the Zika virus.

At a local health clinic, the Democratic presidential nominee said Republican congressional leaders should summon lawmakers back to Washington and immediately pass funding for the Zika response.

Clinton said she was “very disappointed” that Congress left for recess without passing legislation. She spoke after touring the Borinquen Medical Center, a health clinic close to the Wynwood area where 21 non-travel related cases of Zika have been diagnosed.

"Everybody has a stake in this. And that’s really why I’m here,” Clinton said. “We don’t want to wake up in a year and read more stories about babies like the little girl who just died in Houston.”

It’s an issue that could affect votes in this crucial swing state where she has held a small advantage in recent polls. So far, Republican Donald Trump has not addressed the issue in depth, though he told a Florida television station last week that Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, “really seems to have it under control in Florida.”

Trump, meanwhile, campaigning in North Carolina, stirred a new controversy by saying that if Clinton is elected, “Second Amendment people” could do something to prevent her from overturning the right to bear arms.

He contended, as he has in the past, that she would “essentially abolish” the Second Amendment.

He continued: “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Clinton’s campaign

Clinton

manager immediately denounced Trump’s remarks, suggesting he was inciting

violence.

But Trump’s communications director, Jason Miller, said he was merely praising the “amazing spirit” of strong supporters of the Second Amendment’s gun rights guarantee.

Until this month, the only known cases in the United States were in people who had recently traveled to Latin America or the Caribbean. Federal officials last week warned pregnant women to avoid the Miami neighborhood and a square-mile area around it.

Lawmakers left Washington in mid-July for a seven-week recess without approving any of the $1.9 billion that President Barack Obama requested in February to try to develop a vaccine and control the mosquitoes.

convictions in the course of this election.”

Yet from Trump’s foes, the reaction was swift and unforgiving.

Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, called the comments “dangerous.” Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Clinton, said Trump had “suggested that someone shoot Hillary Clinton.”

Across the country, Democratic House and Senate candidates piled on, working to tie Trump’s comments to their GOP opponents.

And the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which has endorsed Clinton, said Trump was encouraging gun violence “based on conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton.”

Tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat: “@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.”

The National Rifle Association, the gun lobby that has endorsed Trump, came to his defense. The group wrote on Twitter that “there’s nothing we can do” if Clinton is elected while urging voters to defeat her in November.

The controversy immediately overwhelmed Trump’s intended campaign-trail focus: the economic plan he unveiled just a day earlier.

US preparing to announce findings on Baltimore police force

By Juliet Linderman and Eric Tucker ASSOCIATED PRE SS

BALTIMORE — The Justice Department is expected to announce Wednesday the findings of a yearlong investigation into possible unconstitutional practices at the Baltimore police force, according to an official familiar with the probe. The report, which examined how officers used force and conducted traffic stops, is likely to promote changes in fundamental policing practices.

The federal investigation was launched following the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a 25year-old black man whose neck was broken while he was handcuffed and shackled but left unrestrained in the back of a police van. The death set off protests and the worst riots in decades.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on

condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the government’s report was expected Wednesday.

Justice Department David Jacobs declined to comment on the timing or content of the report.

The report will mark the culmination of a federal civil rights investigation into potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops, at one of the country’s largest police forces.

Federal investigators spent more than a year interviewing Baltimore residents, police officers, prosecutors, public defenders and elected officials, as well as riding along with officers on duty and reviewing documents and complaints.

State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the city’s top prosecutor, said she expected the report to “confirm what many in our city already know or have experienced firsthand.”

“While the vast major-

ity of Baltimore City Police officers are good officers, we also know that there are bad officers and that the department has routinely failed to oversee, train, or hold bad actors accountable,” she said in a statement.

She said she was confident that the federal probe would “lead to even more reforms which is an important step in ensuring best practices for a fully functioning police-prosecutor relationship.”

Such federal investigations generally resolve with court-monitored consent decrees in which a police department commits to broad changes sought by the Justice Department. The Justice Department can sue agencies that refuse to make the changes.

Six officers were charged in the death of Gray. Three were acquitted, another officer’s trial ended in a mistrial and the charges against the others were dropped.

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 |

A9

BUSINESS

Facebook hates ad blockers so much it now blocks them

By Barbara Ortutay A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

NEW YORK — Facebook is blocking ad blockers on the desktop version of its service, saying well-made, relevant ads can be “useful.”

At the same time, the world’s biggest social media company says it is giving users easier ways to decide what types of ads they want to see — unless, of course, the answer is “none.”

Ad blockers filter out ads by refusing to display page images and other elements that originated with a known ad server. But Facebook has found a way around this.

Beginning Tuesday, the desktop version of Facebook will show users ads even if they have ad

blockers installed.

The changes don’t affect the mobile Facebook app, which brings in the bulk of the company’s advertising revenue.

As with most new Facebook features, the changes are being rolled out to users over time, so some people might see it before others.

service that’s only able to operate because it makes money from advertising.

In the most recent quarter , Facebook made $6.24 billion in advertising revenue, an increase of 63 percent from a year earlier. Mobile advertising (which is not affected by the changes) accounted for 84 percent of this.

Facebook needs ads While couching its move in the language of customer service — primarily by reiterating its premise that ads serve a purpose if they’re relevant and well-targeted — Facebook is also upfront about needing them to make money.

Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, pointed out in a blog post that Facebook is a free

Cat-and-mouse blocking Several publishers, such as The New York Times have tried to work around ad blockers by asking users with ad blockers installed to turn them off in order to be allowed on a website.

Other technology can “reinsert” ads that have been blocked. But there are ways to configure ad blockers to stymie these

Survey: Americans remain gloomy about economy

By Paul Wiseman A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

WASHINGTON — Americans, Japanese and many Europeans are glum about their national economies. By contrast, Chinese, Indians and Australians feel positive about theirs.

Those are among the findings from a survey released Tuesday of 20,132 people in 16 countries by the Pew Research Center.

Just 44 percent of Americans rated the U.S. economy as “good,” although that proportion has risen steadily from 18 percent in 2011. Since that year, the U.S. unemployment rate has tumbled from 9 percent to 4.9 percent.

Politics plays a role in how Americans assess their economy: Just 37 percent of U.S. conservatives give the economy high marks, versus 45 percent of moderates and 55 percent of liberals.

China’s economic growth has been decelerating for five years, but 87 percent of Chinese still describe their economy as

good. So do 80 percent of Indians and 57 percent of Australians.

People in Japan and in many European countries regard their economies as poor.

No one was more miserable than the Greeks: Just 2 percent rated Greece’s economy as good, versus 97 percent who saw it as bad. No surprise: The Greek economy has shrunk 26 percent since 2007, and unemployment is 23.5 percent.

But within Europe, there were exceptions: Germans, Swedes and Dutch rank their economies highly. European men tend to rate their national economies higher than women do.

The survey was taken from April 4 to May 29, which means that the results emerged before Britain voted June 23 to leave the European Union.

That vote rattled financial markets and magnified uncertainty about the outlook for the economies of Britain and continental Europe.

Jeff Chiu / AP file

In this June 11, 2014, file photo, a man walks past a mural in an office on the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif.

efforts as well.

Facebook’s ad-blocker blocker works by making it difficult for software to distinguish advertisements from other material published on Facebook, such as photos or status updates.

But while users won’t be able to stop ads from

showing up, Facebook says it wants to make it easier for people to control the types of ads they want to see. For example, if you don’t want to see ads from a specific business, or ads that target a specific category like travel, cat owners or wine lovers, you can say

so.

“We also heard that people want to be able to stop seeing ads from businesses or organizations who have added them to their customer lists, and so we are adding tools that allow people to do this,” Bosworth wrote.

Some Delta systems haven’t recovered fully from Monday’s outage

By David Koenig ASSOCIATED PRE SS

DALLAS — Delta Air Lines said Tuesday that some computer systems are still working slowly more than a day after an outage crippled the airline and led to more than 1,500 canceled flights.

The system the airline uses to check in and board passengers as well as dispatch its planes is still slow, said Gil West, Delta’s chief operating officer.

West offered Delta’s most detailed explanation yet of what happened Monday to trigger the global computer outage: A critical piece of equipment failed at the airline’s Atlanta headquarters, causing a loss of power, and key systems and equipment did not switch over to backups as designed.

Delta passengers endured hundreds more canceled and delayed flights as the carrier slogged through day two of its recovery from the meltdown.

By late afternoon Tuesday, the airline said it had canceled 680 flights as it moved planes and crews to “reset” its operation.

Another 1,900 Delta flights had been delayed, accord-

ing to tracking service FlightStats Inc. In a video posted on the airline’s website, CEO Ed Bastian said Delta probably will have cancelations and delays Wednesday too, although he didn’t give numbers.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s office said the government was talking to Delta about technical issues surrounding the outage, but gave no specifics.

The Transportation Department said it also made sure Delta provided information about customer refunds on its website and was reviewing the consumer complaints that it had received.

Delta’s hub in Atlanta was the epicenter of problem flights on Tuesday, with lines that were much longer than the day before.

Debbie McGarry left Switzerland on Monday and was still stuck Tuesday at the Atlanta airport, far from her Arizona home.

Hopes of getting on a plane were raised and dashed overnight. By 3 a.m., passengers were getting irate.

“Some of the men were yelling,” she said. “I thought there might be a fistfight.”

Tuesday’s disruptions followed about 1,000 cancelations and 2,800 delayed flights on Monday.

The airline’s computer systems were back online after a few hours Monday, but the ripple effects lingered.

“We are still operating in recovery mode,” Dave Holtz, senior vice president of operations, said Tuesday.

Delta extended a travelwaiver policy to help stranded passengers rearrange their travel plans.

It offered refunds and $200 in travel vouchers to people whose flights were canceled or delayed at least three hours. And Delta said it gave hotel vouchers to “several thousand” customers including 2,000 in Atlanta.

Delta’s challenge Tuesday was to find enough seats on planes during the busy summer vacation season to accommodate the tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were scrubbed.

Airlines have been packing more people in each plane, so when a major carrier has a technology crash it’s harder to find seats for the waylaid.

Last month, the average Delta flight was 87 percent

full.

Confusion among passengers Monday was compounded as Delta’s flight-status updates crashed as well. Instead of staying home or poolside at a hotel until the airline could fix the mess, many passengers learned about the gridlock only after they reached the airport.

They were stuck.

A spokesman for the local electric company, Georgia Power, said the problem started with a piece of Delta equipment called a switchgear, which direct flows within a power system. No other customers lost power, he said.

Airlines depend on huge, overlapping and complicated systems to operate flights, ticketing, boarding, airport kiosks, websites and mobile phone apps. Even brief outages can now snarl traffic and, as the Delta incident shows, those problems can go global in seconds.

Last month, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights over four days after an outage that it blamed on a faulty network router. United Airlines and American Airlines both suffered outages last year.

A10 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

INTERNATIONAL

3 pollsters beaten then rescued from mob in southern Mexico A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

MEXICO CITY — Three employees of a polling company were rescued Tuesday from a mob in southern Mexico that beat them bloody after apparently mistaking them for thieves.

Inhabitants of the town of Centla, in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, attacked five employees of the SIMO Consulting firm, including two women and three men. Three of the poll workers, including one woman, were held for hours and beat-

en, while two others were protected by a local official.

The company said in a statement that the Monday night attack left three of its employees injured, one seriously. The mob apparently mistook them for thieves. The company denied they were involved in any illegal acts.

The pollsters were freed Tuesday morning in a joint operation by federal police, marines and soldiers.

“People cannot take the law into their own hands,” state Interior

Secretary Gustavo Rosario said. “The state government condemns these acts.”

Similar mob incidents have been incited in Mexico by false reports of crimes.

Last October, a mob killed and burned the bodies of two pollsters conducting a survey about tortilla consumption in a small town southeast of Mexico City.

The mob had accused the men of molesting a local girl, but the girl later said she had never even seen the two before.

Beauty pageant head killed in Mexico, 5 killed outside bar

By Mark Stevenson A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

MEXICO CITY — Authorities in northern Mexico said Tuesday the murder of the director of the Miss World Mexico beauty pageant was a targeted killing.

A Sinaloa state official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said that armed men stopped Hugo Castellanos in a vehicle he was travelling in and kidnapped him. They apparently let his companions go and then killed him.

Castellanos’ body was found Sunday in a stolen vehicle, along with cash and documents, in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan.

The area is known for its drug trade and drug capos have been known to bribe or pressure pageants to award titles to their girlfriends. Prosecutors are investigating possible motives, and the official said they have not ruled out the idea of a link between the killing and the pageant business.

According to local media, Castellanos had

attended a Miss Sinaloa pageant before he was kidnapped and killed.

And in southern Mexico, meanwhile, prosecutors said five men died late Monday in a hail of bullets outside a bar near the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo.

A total of 123 shell casings from assault rifles were found at the scene of the shootings.

Prosecutors said the motive in the attack is still under investigation.

The area is known for drug violence and the cultivation of opium poppies.

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 |

A11

FROM THE COVER GUNMEN From page A1 about 30 minutes later at the bar Le Queen, located on Bulevar Municipio Libre between Reforma and Monterrey avenues. A man, whose identity was not released, died while a woman sustained a gunshot wound to her left arm.

An investigation revealed that armed suspects in an SUV stopped outside the bar and opened fire. The man who died was charging the entrance fee into the bar.

Authorities said they found a grenade that did not detonate and 35 .223mm spent casings. Mexican

OIL From page A1 A few years ago, Lara spent more time outdoors.

He tended goats and liked to host big family barbecues even though he was on disability because of an old back injury. Now his wife, a sliver of his size, has to help him walk from the kitchen to the bedroom. He’s 51.

“This is who I am right now,” Lara said, his voice rough as the sound of boots on gravel. “It was like they took everything away from me.”

Other family members have health problems too, including nosebleeds, dizziness and body aches.

One daughter miscarried in 2013.

One evening in late January, the glow from a flare at the neighboring production facility lit their property like a large torch, throwing long shadows and revealing green pasture.

“It lights up everything here at night,” Raquel Lara said, pointing around the property. “The grass is green. See how you can see the grass.”

The Laras said they were slow to think there might be link between oil field facilities and their health.

When an oil well blew out on a neighboring ranch 15 months ago, watching the cloud of oil spray across rolling prairie helped throw everything into focus for the couple.

“I saw it shooting straight up, white and then it turned to black,” Lonjino Lara said. “It was shooting very high. Everybody was scrambling to get out of here.”

They left so fast they didn’t bring extra clothes.

A well-maintenance crew had been at work on the Dromgoole B 8H well on May 19, 2015, putting production pipe into the hole.

The Encana Corp. well, across a farm-to-market road from the Laras’, already had been drilled and hydraulically fractured, the process of pumping millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand into the well to crack open shale, allowing oil and gas to escape the rock.

This crew had been at work on the final stages of bringing the well into production when it lost control. A gas pressure kick pushed a pipe 20 feet above the rig floor where the roughnecks were standing.

Fluid started spraying out of the pipe.

It was one of 221 well blowouts in Texas since 2006, state records show — not an unheard-of accident, but a rare one in a state with about 324,000 active wells.

In this accident, there was no fire or injuries — just water followed by oil blowing across the prairie.

Evacuees from 30 structures in a 3-mile radius included the Laras, their three daughters, two sonsin-law and three grandchildren. They and their neighbors headed to nearby Karnes City, about an hour’s drive southeast of San Antonio.

troops seized the grenade.

Recent violence Over the last few days, there has been reports of infighting in the Zetas drug cartel.

Recently, a group dubbed La Vieja Guardia made threats on social media saying they were going to cleanse Nuevo Laredo of Cartel Del Noreste members.

On July 31, a clash among criminal groups and the Mexican military left four suspects and one soldier dead.

A travel warning issued by the U.S. Department of State remains active. It states that U.S. citizens should “defer all non-essential travel to the state of Tamaulipas.”

Calgary-based well owner Encana Corp. put everyone up in a new hotel that had been built to capture business from transient oil field workers during the boom years of the Eagle Ford, the 400mile oil field that swoops across South Texas and produces more than 1.1 million barrels a day of crude and the light oil condensate.

While residents fled to the hotel, the blowout shut down County Road 343 and parts of FM 792.

Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters blocked the roads to stop landowners from checking on livestock and pets.

Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva’s phones were ringing off the hook. He kept telling people, “I understand, I love animals, too, but you cannot go back there.”

It took about 28 hours and a Houston company that specializes in such disasters to bring the well under control. Encana began soil cleanup and coordinated road repair with the state — the combination of hot sun and standing oil had melted the road surface of FM 792. The company also had to evacuate livestock from the area.

It’s not known how much oil escaped the well.

Anywhere from 2,362 barrels to 4,050 barrels — as much as 170,000 gallons of crude, according to estimates Encana gave to the state. There also was natural gas blowing from the well, along with “produced water,” which also is trapped in deep rock and gets produced alongside oil and gas.

The well released more than 860,000 pounds of air contaminants — mostly oil, but also other compounds such as propane, iso-butane, n-butane and hexanes, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report on the accident states.

Oil coated pastures and trees and created a brown, dead zone in its path.

The blowout was north of the oil boomtown of Kenedy in a sparsely populated area of Karnes County, which became the state’s most prolific oil producer late in 2012. It wasn’t far from Helena, a ghost town that once housed the county courthouse and called itself the “toughest town on earth,” where horse thieves, cattle rustlers and brawls were part of the fabric of early Texas life.

At the time, Encana was one of the newer entrants into the Eagle Ford Shale. It spent $3.1 billion in a deal completed in June 2014 to buy Freeport McMoRan’s position in the field — 45,500 acres in Karnes, Wilson and Atascosa counties.

The oddly named Railroad Commission of Texas — which has nothing to do with railroads — investigates well blowouts.

The agency straddles twin goals: regulating oil and gas while also encouraging the production of the state’s mineral wealth, which provides billions of dollars in taxes and is an important economic engine for Texas.

It took almost a year for the Railroad Commission

HEALTH From page A1 awareness of community health centers and their importance in the community during her speech.

Health center patients have a responsibility to help advocate as “the power lies in our patients and our supporters,” GonzalesHanson said.

She applauded Clinton and Sanders’ mentions of health centers in their speeches made during the Democratic National Convention.

When discussing the

to level an administrative penalty against Encana for the well blowout. On May 3, the company agreed to pay $17,500 for the accident.

Encana spokesman Doug Hock said the company, third-party environmental experts and the Railroad Commission collaborated on environmental remediation.

“Encana has completed that work and submitted technical reports for review and approval by the Texas Railroad Commission,” Hock said. “As indicated in our formal submittal, the area potentially impacted by the incident now meets the applicable standards set by the state of Texas for the protection of human health and the environment.”

Other worries For the Laras, the well blowout created more questions. They stayed at the hotel for about three weeks and said they started swapping stories with other evacuees: strange odors, gas flares that produced black smoke, headaches that started when the smells grew strong.

Last spring, 30 of the Laras’ goats died. They had not shown any signs of illness, and as far as the Laras could tell, they died for no reason at all. Ten of their dogs also have died for no apparent reason.

“We were hearing everybody’s stories,” Lonjino Lara said. “I was like, that’s what’s wrong with me.”

The Laras started to worry more about the production facility that they lived next to than the well blowout. Oil flows from nearby wells through a pipeline to the Patton Trust South Production Facility, where the oil and gas streams are separated in order to be sold. Briny water, which gets produced alongside oil and gas, is separated out too.

About 9,000 barrels of oil and 3,500 barrels of produced water come into the plant next to the Laras’ home every day, its most recent permit application says.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, oversees air permits and complaints about odors, and it has investigated the plant several times. There have been 15 air-quality complaints about the site since 2012 and four written notices of violation.

In October 2012, when another company owned the facility, a TCEQ investigation noted that “a great potential for creation of nuisance odors exists at this site.”

In August 2014, the previous owner was fined $1,000 for air violations, which later was knocked down to $800 for coming into compliance with state rules. It’s the only fine for that facility, though both the TCEQ and the Railroad Commission have long-stated policies of letting companies bring facilities into compliance instead of leveling fines.

In mid-2014, just before the Encana purchase, the plant received a notice of violation for not meeting

presidential candidates, Gonzales-Hanson said “we have the support of the Legislature and it would be great to have the president’s support.”

The National Association of Community Health Centers estimates health centers in America serve over 22 million people in lowincome and medically underserved communities.

Health centers provide lower costs of care to over 25 million patients nationwide.

Gateway Community Health Center currently provides services to

permit requirements because it was operating a sour gas facility too close to the Laras’ house.

Sour gas, or hydrogen sulfide, is poisonous and smells like rotten eggs.

The plant had gone through the state’s permitby-rule process, a speedier application for facilities that produce a trivial amount of air emissions.

Permit-by-rule facilities are not allowed to operate within a quarter-mile, 1,320 feet, of a home or building that the company does not own or use exclusively.

Documents submitted to the state in 2012 said the Patton Trust South plant was 1,953.6 feet from the nearest home. TCEQ did not do a site visit.

More recent technical paperwork and permits show the plant actually is 800 feet from the Laras’ home, less than half the distance the original owner claimed — far short of the allowed quarter-mile.

But the quarter-mile rule for sour gas facilities no longer applies — the site now operates under a standard permit that allows facilities to be as close as 50 feet from a property line, according to the TCEQ. Investigations at the site haven’t always found problems. Last August, investigators using infrared cameras found emissions from a relief valve and thief hatch of a condensate tank. An investigation concluded in April found visible emissions from a gas flare in December and January — a sign the flare was burning inefficiently and releasing air pollutants.

But the state in January did a separate downwind test for 84 volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. It didn’t detect anything that would be expected to cause short-term health problems.

Hock said the company has made improvements to the site since its purchase, and is focused on safety and minimizing its environmental impact.

“Extensive voluntary third-party testing of the Lara property indicates no environmental impacts from the incident or our ongoing operations. Nevertheless, we continue to engage in good faith discussions with the Lara family, seeking to address their concerns,” Hock said.

He said Encana has made substantial improvements to the Patton Trust South plant, and the company works hard to operate it in full compliance of environmental regulations.

Its latest permit application says the facility may emit pollutants that include as much as 218 tons of VOCs each year; 242 tons of carbon monoxide; 140 tons of nitrogen oxide, known as or NOx, which contributes to the production of smog; 7 tons of the gas formaldehyde, which can irritate the skin, eyes, nose and throat; and 5 tons of sulfur dioxide, which can cause breathing problems. It operates 24 hours a day, year round.

“The area surrounding the facility is relatively flat surrounded by county roads, vegetation, and

over 26,000 patients in Webb, Zapata and Jim Hogg counties.

The theme of this year’s National Health Center Week is “Celebrating America’s Health Centers: Innovators in Community Health.”

Gateway Community Health Center Chairman Lauro A. Garcia said this week is dedicated to all professionals who give quality care to patients in need.

Elmo Lopez Jr., CEO of Gateway Community Health Center, said Gateway provides a viable link for patients as services are open to

other oil and gas facilities,” the company’s permit application says.

It does not describe the Laras’ home next door.

Legal battles The Laras have an attorney, but they haven’t filed a lawsuit and aren’t anxious to get into a court battle. Instead, attorneys for both sides have had meetings, and the Laras have appeared for some meetings to describe their health complaints.

Nuisance suits against oil and gas companies are rare, and families who file them face uphill odds against deep-pocketed opponents.

A 2013 lawsuit from one family in South Texas never made it to a jury trial — it was thrown out by a state district judge. In Karnes County, Michael and Myra Cerny’s complaint against two oil companies detailed myriad maladies: headaches, rashes, bone pain, numbness, nosebleeds, irregular heartbeats and bronchitis.

“Since the plaintiffs’ property is completely surrounded by the defendants’ wells and production facilities, no matter the wind direction, their property is always smelling of noxious odors,” the suit said.

In a summary judgment hearing in 2014, state District Judge Stella Saxon in Karnes County said the plaintiffs had a “real difficulty” in proving causation — that the two oil and gas companies and not something else in the air caused injury.

“That’s a high hurdle that has to be jumped,” Saxon said.

The attorneys on both sides spent hours arguing the merits of various court cases that dealt with whether the Cernys needed expert testimony or epidemiological studies to prove their health problems were caused by hydrocarbons.

Ultimately, Saxon told the Cernys they could take it to the Court of Appeals in San Antonio.

“Let them decide,” Saxon said. “If it comes back, it comes back.”

The family appealed, but the appeals court sided with the oil and gas companies last November.

In a partial dissent of that opinion, Judge Luz Elena Chapa said she agreed that expert testimony and studies were needed for anything that had to do with medical claims, but argued that, beyond health issues, there was enough evidence to give merit to nuisance complaints about foul odors that interfered with the use and enjoyment of the property.

The Cernys appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which in June asked for the case file, though that doesn’t mean it will hear the case.

Two other families have nearly identical suits to the Cerny case in Karnes County, but those are on hold pending the Cernys’ outcome.

The most successful Texas suit against a shale driller for nuisance has been winding its way through the court system

anyone.

“No one is turned away,” he said.

“Our approach is to look at the whole health of a person and their life beyond the walls of our health center.”

National Health Center Week continues with health fairs in Webb, Zapata and Jim Hogg counties.

For more information visit www.healthcenter week.com.

Taryn Walters may be reached at 956-728-2528 or twalters@lmtonline.com

in North Texas.

A Dallas County jury granted a couple $2.9 million for their 2011 claim against Plano-based Aruba Petroleum. Bob and Lisa Parr, who appeared in anti-fracking activist Josh Fox’s “Gasland II” movie, alleged spills and emissions from the company’s operations made them, their livestock and their pets sick, and forced them to evacuate their Wise County land.

Aruba has appealed the verdict, calling the award excessive, and it cites the Cerny case in its court filings. In both cases, companies argue that their industrial activities are not out of place in areas that have become large shale oil and gas fields.

Christopher Hamilton is a Dallas-area attorney representing a family injured in a North Texas water well that exploded with methane gas.

Hamilton said it’s possible to successfully fight the industry, but the amounts in dispute and the damages someone could collect may not be enough to make it economically feasible to go to court. Barring catastrophic injuries, chemical exposure cases require scientific evidence that’s too expensive for most regular people to gather, and expert testimony that’s pricey to procure.

“The third thing is just the general climate of belief, based on what’s happened in the appellate courts and within the regulatory system, that the oil and gas companies are untouchable in Texas,” Hamilton said. “There are lot of these issues, including property contamination and the contamination of water and air and soil where the regulators really ought to be stepping in and taking care of those issues instead of forcing people to go to court.”

Laura Burney, an oil and gas attorney and law professor at St. Mary’s University, said many of the disputes involve people who own the surface of the land but not the minerals, giving them all the hassle and none of the financial benefit of oil and gas production. The mineral estate trumps the surface estate in Texas, and absent a strong surface-use agreement between the landowner and producer, the rights of surface owners are limited.

Energy firms may act as “reasonably prudent” operators to make oil and gas, and that includes basic things such as entering property as well as actions that may damage the surface such as adding new roads, storing equipment or building drilling pads.

There’s a slew of Texas case law about cattle wandering near well sites and eating or drinking something that makes them sick. (Usually not considered the industry’s fault — companies don’t have to fence off wells to keep out cattle).

“They get to do what’s reasonable for them to produce oil and gas,” Burney said. “A cow might die.”

A12 | Wednesday, August 10, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES