Category Archives: U.S. Geological Service (USGS)

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Over 60 dead in Texas flooding – Trump and DOGE staffing cuts responsible?

Federal forecast concerns surface in Texas’ deadly flooding debate

Damage in Kerrville on July 5, 2025, following a flash flood event on Independence Day (KXAN photo/Tom Miller)

KXAN, Austin, Texas NBC affiliate, by Josh Hinkle and David Barer, July 5, 2025 (updated July 6, 2025)

KERR COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — State and local officials are calling out federal forecasters amid deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country over the extended Fourth of July weekend. The criticism comes, as funding cuts and staff shortages plague the National Weather Service and other emergency management agencies nationwide.

Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told reporters Friday original forecasts from the National Weather Service predicted 4 to 8 inches of rain in that area, “but the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”

“Listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right?” Kidd said. “You all got it, you’re all in media, you got that forecast. It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

Kidd added TDEM “worked with our own meteorologist to finetune that weather statement” but did not elaborate on any updated interpretation that would have led to more urgent warnings for evacuations.

The area actually received a much more significant amount of rain that night, with NWS observed totals exceeding 10 inches just west of Kerrville, near where dozens were killed or remain missing – including several children at a summer camp.

Localized LCRA rainfall totals in the region have exceeded 18 inches in some places.

The Guadalupe River in Kerrville measured just under a foot on Thursday, leading up to midnight. At about 4 a.m. Friday, the river rose over 30 feet in less than two hours, according USGS data.

Critical communication

On Friday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also said during a separate press event that TDEM Region 6 Assistant Chief Jay Hall “personally contacted the judges and mayors in that area and notified them all of potential flooding.” KXAN has requested record of that communication to verify that statement and its level of urgency.

Acting Gov. Dan Patrick being briefed (KXAN photo/Jordan Belt)

“Yesterday morning, the message was sent,” Patrick added. “It is up to the local counties and mayors under the law to evacuate if they feel a need. That information was passed along.”

NWS issued a flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. Friday for a portion of Kerr County – where the majority of flood-related deaths have been reported. But it would be at least four hours before any county or city government entity posted directions to evacuate on social media.

City and county officials have yet to fully explain the timing of their Facebook posts surrounding the height of the flood or other ways they might have notified people near the water. Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring, Jr., said Saturday the city had done an “admirable” job making sure all information was available to the public. KXAN is awaiting responses after requesting records of communication between city, county and state officials to better understand decisions regarding their public warnings.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly has claimed officials “didn’t know this flood was coming.”

“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis – when it rains, we get water,” Kelly said to reporters Friday. “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what has happened here, none whatsoever.”

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice reiterated that apparent lack of awareness, telling the media Friday: “This rain event sat on top of that and dumped more rain than what was forecasted.”

Following those statements, the NWS provided additional details on its notification timeline for the Kerr County flood, including:

  • The National Water Center Flood Hazard Outlook issued on Thursday morning indicated an expansion of flash flood potential to include Kerrville and surrounding areas.
  • A flood watch was issued by the NWS Austin/San Antonio office at 1:18 p.m. on Thursday, in effect through Friday morning.
  • The Weather Prediction Center issued three Mesoscale Precipitation Discussions for the excessive rainfall event as early as 6:10 p.m. Thursday indicating the potential for flash flooding.
  • The National Water Center Area Hydrologic Discussion #144 at 6:22 p.m. on Thursday messaged locally considerable flood wording for areas north and west of San Antonio, including Kerrville.
  • At 1:14 a.m. Friday, a flash flood warning with a considerable tag (which denotes high-damage threats and will automatically trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts on enabled mobile devices and over NOAA Weather Radio) was issued for Kerr County.
  • The flash flood warning was upgraded to a flash flood emergency for southcentral Kerr County as early as 4:03 a.m. Friday.
  • The 5:00 a.m. National Water Center Area Hydrologic Discussion #146 on Friday included concern for widespread considerable flooding through the day. The Flood Hazard Outlook was also upgraded to considerable and catastrophic.
  • A flash flood emergency was issued for the Guadalupe River at 5:34 a.m.

KXAN is awaiting additional responses from the NWS on that timeline. KXAN also requested comments from Kidd and from NWS Austin/San Antonio Meteorologist in Charge Pat Vesper regarding how recent federal funding cuts might have impacted weather forecasting abilities in Texas.

TDEM responded but did not answer KXAN’s questions or indicate when Kidd would be available to speak directly about those issues. An NWS spokesperson said Vesper’s office “is focused on forecast operations right now, as flash flooding is ongoing.”

NWS staffing concerns

While state and local officials have not publicly – nor outright – blamed the Trump Administration’s financial decisions for any possible forecasting issues, public accusations on social media and elsewhere point to their timing during severe weather season.

For instance, directly under Vesper at the local NWS office is a key position – warning coordination meteorologist (WCM) – that has remained vacant since April. The role was most recently held by longtime employee Paul Yura, who took an early retirement package offered to agency workers as the administration worked to reduce the budget and personnel number at the NWS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Yura, who KXAN recently reported spent more than half of his 32-year career at the local NWS office, gained tremendous experience understanding local weather patterns while ensuring timely warnings get disseminated to the public in a multitude of ways. The importance of his role as WCM cannot be understated.

Ensuring ample and timely warning to Central Texas counties was among the chief responsibilities. According to NOAA, “The WCM coordinates the warning function of the office with the outside world. This would include heading the Skywarn Program, conducting spotter training and being a voice to the local media for the office.”

Following the Kerr County flood, KXAN reached out to Yura – who referenced a hiring freeze in his retirement message to the media – but he referred questions to an NWS public affairs official.

Along with Yura’s job, five other vacancies in the local NWS office have stacked up, according to its online staff roster and the NWS Employees Organization. Those include two meteorologists, two technology staff members and a science officer. The office has 26 employees when fully staffed.

Federal funding and staff cuts

The administration made cuts to the federal workforce an early priority in Trump’s second presidential term this year, and those reductions extended to the NWS.

In May, NBC News reported the agency was working to shuffle employees to cover 150 positions that were vacated by the firings of probationary employees and early retirements of other longtime workers.

Some forecasting offices were left without overnight service, though no Texas offices were mentioned among those.

Tom Fahy, the NWSEO legislative director, then told NBC the staff cuts could increase risk and damage the agency’s ability to respond to a disaster.

Fahy told KXAN on Saturday the Central Texas flooding “was indeed a flash precipitation event,” leading to massive rainfall – something the local NWS office still had “adequate staffing and resources” to handle, despite its vacancies.

“They issued timely forecasts and warnings leading up to the storm,” he said, also referencing flood watches “out well in advance” the day before the waters rose.

In early June, the NWS was seeking to hire at least 126 people across the country, including meteorologists, following previous staff cuts, The Hill reported. A NOAA spokesperson told the outlet the NWS would be conducting “short term temporary duty assignments” and providing “reassignment opportunity notices” to fill field offices with the “greatest operational needs.”

The NWS Austin/San Antonio Weather Forecast Office currently has a 15% vacancy rate for meteorologists. The office’s total vacancy rate was 12% at the beginning of the year, but that increased to 23% by the end of April when employees took buyouts, Fahy confirmed to KXAN.

Federal officials visiting

President Trump posted on Truth Social he is “working with State and Local Officials on the ground in Texas in response to the tragic flooding,” ahead of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visit to represent the administration in Kerrville Saturday.

During a press conference after surveying the area, Noem told reporters the amount of rain in this flooding event was “unprecedented,” underscoring the reason Trump is working to “fix” aging technology within NOAA.

“I do carry your concerns back to the federal government and back to President Trump,” she said, acknowledging the need for upgraded technology to give “families have as much warning as possible.”

Central Texas flooding

Central Texas and the Hill Country are broadly known for major floods. With one of the highest risks for flash flooding in the country, the area has earned the nickname “flash flood alley,” according to LCRA.

This weekend’s tragedy isn’t the first.

Blanco River flood in San Marcos May 27 2015. Courtesy: Getty Images

In 1987, a flood hit the Guadalupe River, pushing the waterway up 29 feet and catching a church camp bus, according to the NWS. The bus, which was being used to evacuate dozens of children, was swept away and 10 children were killed.

Again, in 1998, flooding struck the region. On Oct. 17 and 18 that year a storm dropped roughly 30 inches of rain near San Marcos. Homes along the Guadalupe River near Canyon Lake and down to Seguin were washed off their foundations, NWS reported.

Bakken Crude, Bakken Shale, Fracking, Keep it in the ground, Keeping Watch on Earth News, North Dakota, U.S. Geological Service (USGS)

The Bakken Boom Goes Bust With No Money to Clean up the Mess

Desmog, by Justin Mikulka, August 8, 2020
Northwestern ND Aerial Photos  Credit: NDDOT Photos, CC PDM 1.0

More than a decade ago, fracking took off in the Bakken shale of North Dakota and Montana, but the oil rush that followed has resulted in major environmental damage, risky oil transportation without regulation, pipeline permitting issues, and failure to produce profits.

Now, after all of that, the Bakken oil field appears moving toward terminal decline, with the public poised to cover the bill to clean up the mess caused by its ill-fated boom.
Historical Bakken oil production. Energy Information Administration

In 2008, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) estimated that the Bakken region held between 3 and 4.3 billion barrels of “undiscovered, technically recoverable oil,” starting a modern-day oil rush.

This oil was technically recoverable due to the recent success with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of oil and gas-rich shale, which allowed hydrocarbons trapped in the rock to be pumped out of reservoirs previously unreachable by conventional oil drilling technology.

The industry celebrated the discovery of oil in the middle of North America but realized it also posed a problem. A major oil boom requires infrastructure — such as housing for workers, facilities to process the oil and natural gas, and pipelines to carry the products to market — and the Bakken simply didn’t have such infrastructure. North Dakota is a long way from most U.S. refineries and deepwater ports. Its shale definitely held oil and gas, but the area was not prepared to deal with these hydrocarbons once they came out of the ground.

Most of the supporting infrastructure was never built — or was built haphazardly — resulting in risks to the public that include industry spills, air and water pollution, and dangerous trains carrying volatile oil out of the Bakken and through their communities. With industry insiders recently commenting that the Bakken region is likely past peak oil production, that infrastructure probably never will be built.

Embed from Getty Images

Meanwhile, the petro-friendly government of North Dakota has failed to regulate the industry when money was plentiful during the boom, leaving the state with a financial and environmental mess and no way to fund its cleanup during the bust.

Haste Makes Waste: Booms Move Faster Than Regulations

After the USGS announced the discovery of oil in the Bakken, the oil and gas industry moved fast, with both the industry and state and federal regulators ignoring whether what amounted to essentially new methods of extracting and transporting large amounts of oil called for new rules and protections.

The Bakken’s big increase in oil production quickly exceeded its existing pipeline capacity, leading producers to turn to trucks to move their oil out of the fields. But as the Globe and Mail reported in 2013, this stop-gap solution wasn’t working well: “The trucking frenzy was chewing up roads, driving accident rates to record highs and infuriating local residents.”

The industry could have restricted production until new pipelines and processing equipment were built but instead moved to rail as the next transportation option. High oil prices motivated drillers to get the oil out of the ground and to customers as fast as possible. Moving oil by rail was essentially unregulated and would not require the permits, large investment, or lead times required for pipelines, leading to the Bakken oil-by-rail boom.

Moving large amounts of this light volatile oil on trains had never been done before — but there was no new regulatory oversight of the process. Without proper oversight, the industry loaded the Bakken’s volatile oil into rail tank cars originally designed to carry products like corn oil. That’s despite the National Transportation Safety Board warning that these tank cars were not safe to move flammable liquids like Bakken crude oil.

The industry waved away these warnings. July 6, 2013 marked the first major derailment of a Bakken oil train, resulting in a massive explosion, 47 deaths, and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Bakken “bomb trains” (as train operators called them) continued to derail, creating large oil spills and often catching fire and burning for days. Regulators have still failed to address the known risks for oil trains in the U.S. and Canada. 

Fracking for oil also resulted in large volumes of natural gas coming out of the same wells as the oil, further contributing to the financial troubles of shale producers. However, with no infrastructure in place to process or carry away that gas, the industry chose to either leave it mixed in with the oil loaded onto trains (making it more volatile and dangerous) or simply burn (flare) or release (vent) the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

More than a decade after the Bakken boom started, North Dakota was flaring 23 percent of the gas produced via fracking — making a mockery of the state’s flaring regulations. In July, The New York Times detailed the environmental devastation caused by flaring in the oil fields of Iraq, where they flare about half of the gas as opposed to the quarter of the gas that North Dakota has flared.

Also in July, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California published research that found pregnant women exposed to high levels of flaring at oil and gas production sites in Texas have 50 percent higher odds of premature birth when compared to mothers with no exposure to flaring.

Flare from an oil well in the Permian region of Texas. Credit: © 2020 Justin Hamel

Another major blindspot for the industry and regulators has been the radioactive waste produced during fracking. When the industry did finally acknowledge this issue in North Dakota, its first move was to try to relax regulations to make it easier to dump radioactive waste in landfills — a practice that is contaminating communities across the country.

In 2016, a study from Duke University found “thousands of oil and gas industry wastewater spills in North Dakota have caused ‘widespread’ contamination from radioactive materials…”

The fracking boom in North Dakota has resulted in widespread environmental damage and is worsening the climate crisis, given its high flaring levels, methane emissions, and, of course, production of oil and gas. As major Bakken producers go bankrupt and continue to lose money while the oil field goes bust, who will pay to clean up the mess?

Like most oil-producing states, North Dakota had the opportunity to require oil and gas producers to put up money in the form of bonding which would be designated to properly clean up and cap oil and gas wells once they were finished producing. Unfortunately, the state didn’t put that precaution in place, and now bankrupt companies are starting to walk away from their wells.

“It’s starting to become out of control, and we want to rein this in,” Bruce Hicks, Assistant Director of the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, said last year about companies abandoning oil and gas wells.

The state recently decided to use $66 million in federal funds designated for coronavirus relief to begin cleaning up wells the oil industry has abandoned — costs that the industry should be covering, according to the law, but that are now shifted to the public.

The Bakken boom made a lot of money for a select few oil and gas executives and Wall Street financiers. But as the boom fades, taxpayers and nearby residents have to deal with the financial and environmental damage the industry will leave behind.

Bakken’s Best Days Are a Thing of the Past

As DeSmog reporting has revealed, shale producers have not been profitable for the past decade, even though they have drilled and fracked most of the best available shale oil deposits. While the prolific Permian region in Texas and New Mexico still has some of the best “tier one” core acreage for oil production left, that isn’t the case in the Bakken.

In June, oil and gas industry analysts at Wood MacKenzie highlighted this discrepancy in remaining core acreage between the Permian and the Bakken. According to Wood MacKenzie, the top quarter of remaining oil well inventory in the Permian would result in over 8,000 new wells. For the Bakken, however, the analysts put that number at 333 wells.

This difference is why John Hess, CEO of major Bakken producer Hess Corporation, predicted in January that Bakken production would soon peak.

The drop in oil demand due to the pandemic has hit the industry as a whole, but the Bakken was already in decline, with the best producing wells a thing of the past well before the novel coronavirus reached U.S. shores.

In September 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on the dismal outlook for Hess Corporation’s oil wells, noting last year: “This year’s wells generated an average of about 82,000 barrels of oil in their first five months, 12 percent below wells that began producing in 2018 and 16 percent below 2017 wells.”

Legal Reviews of Pipelines Potentially Causing Shutdowns

Even when the industry did try to construct oilfield infrastructure in the Bakken, its rush to build and manage pipelines hasn’t always worked out well. Legal challenges to two major Bakken pipelines, one old, one new, may shut down both of them soon.

The controversial Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) is facing a potential shutdown after a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers did not properly address oil spill risks and now must complete a full environmental review, which could result in a long-term shutdown of the pipeline while the Corps completes the study. Energy Transfer, DAPL‘s owner, appealed that ruling, and a subsequent court decision has allowed the pipeline to remain in operation while the legal battle over the environmental impact study continues.

At the same time, the Tesoro High Plains pipeline — in operation since 1953 — is facing a shutdown because it failed to renew an agreement with Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation landowners on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, meaning the pipeline’s owner, Marathon, now is trespassing on that land.

These pipelines together ship more than one-third of the oil out of the Bakken, and if they are shut down, Bakken oil producers likely would turn to rail again to move their oil. However, rail is significantly more expensive than pipelines and not economically viable at current low oil prices.

However, at current production levels, existing pipelines (other than the two in question) and current long-term rail contracts can likely handle most of the Bakken’s oil production, especially as the region becomes less attractive to investors.

Energy consulting group ESAI Energy recently released a new report on U.S. pipelines, with analyst Elisabeth Murphy concluding, “An uncertain outcome for Dakota Access will have knock-on effects for the Bakken, such as capital being diverted to other basins that have better access to markets.”

The ESAI analysis also concludes that the Bakken will decline by approximately 270,000 barrels per day on an annual basis in 2020 and by a further 65,000 barrels per day in 2021.

With declining total production and new wells producing less than the past, Bakken producers are facing rising debts without the means to pay them back.

End of the Unconventional Bakken Boom

Oil produced by fracking is called “unconventional oil” due to the new technologies used to extract it from shale. However, it is unconventional in other ways as well. One, it has never been profitable. Another is a change in the boom-and-bust cycle, which has been a part of the oil industry since its inception in the U.S. in the 1850s.

Traditionally the boom-and-bust cycle for conventional oil production was tied to the price of oil. Low prices caused busts. This was true of the shale oil industry in 2014 when oil prices crashed. However, the industry returned to record production after that.

Williston "Rockin' the Bakken" marketing slogan
Screen shot of a marketing slogan for Bakken oil and gas development. Source: https://willistondevelopment.com

But it’s different this time. Unlike conventional oil fields, shale field production declines much more quickly. While shale producers could retreat to the top-producing acreage during the 2014 bust, most of that acreage is now gone.

The shale industry is faced with trying to come back from a historic downturn in which even the companies that don’t go bankrupt are saddled with crippling debts. That’s because for most of the past decade, shale companies borrowed more money than they made producing fracked oil and gas, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

All of the evidence strongly suggest that the Bakken is an oil field on the decline. Its best acreage has been depleted and the economics of the remaining acreage don’t pan out these days.

Reviewing the economics of the Bakken, investment site Seeking Alpha recently concluded that the “Bakken Will Never Be The Same Again.”

Seeking Alpha was purely commenting on the economics of oil production in the Bakken. However, the same could be said about the water, air, and land in the Bakken. Shale companies polluted the environment and are now walking away from the damage — leaving the cleanup bill to the public. It is a tried-and-true approach for industries in resource extraction. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

Hess Corporation CEO John Hess knows more about the economics of the Bakken than most people. In February Reuters reported, “Hess plans to use cash flow from the Bakken to invest in longer-term offshore investments.” A major Bakken producer is apparently no longer viewing the region as a good long-term investment.

From here, the outlook only gets worse for the Bakken.

Main Image: Northwestern ND Aerial Photos  Credit: NDDOT Photos, CC PDM 1.0