Big Bend Residents Work to Engage With Energy Producers Before Development Happens
Kateleigh Mills/KWBU Radio
Texas’ Big Bend region is beloved because of its wildness. There are places between Interstate 10 and the southern U.S. border that still feel untouched. But that could be changing.
As technology improves, areas that were previously closed to oil and gas exploration could become open, and that could include the Big Bend.
Billy Tarrant is the associate director of stewardship services at the Borderlands Research Institute at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. The institute is hosting a series of talks on what the area’s future might look like as an oil extraction zone. He says energy development hasn’t yet become significant in the area around Marfa, Alpine or Marathon. But what could come is an increase in fossil fuel extraction, plus wind and solar farms. And he says even facilities that capture clean sources of energy have an effect on the landscape.
