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The Austin City Council is set to take up a controversial proposal this week about relying more on natural gas during times of high energy demand, and opponents worry about how it could affect climate goals.
If you venture out to Lady Bird Lake this Memorial Day weekend, you might encounter an unfamiliar sight: a construction zone on the water.
How a photography project is helping one woman reclaim her story of loss and perseverance.
Television lovers rejoice: The ATX TV Festival is returning for its 15th season.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Syeda Carillo [00:00:09] Austinites have strong feelings about the possibility of relying more on natural gas during times of high energy demand. The Austin City Council is set to take up a controversial proposal this week, and opponents worry about how it could affect climate goals. We’ll have the latest on that with KUT’s energy and environment reporter, Moe’s Bouchelle.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:29] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Syeda Carrillo.
Syeda Carillo [00:00:34] If you venture out to Lady Bird Lake this Memorial Day weekend, you might encounter an unfamiliar site, a construction zone on the water. Plus how a photography project is helping one woman reclaim her story of loss and perseverance. And television lovers rejoice the ATX TV Festival is returning for its 15th season. That’s all coming up today on Austin Signal. As you just heard on the statewide newscast, President Donald Trump has made a high-profile endorsement in the primary runoff election. In the GOP race for Texas Senate, Trump is throwing his support behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn. You can read more about this and local races at KUT.org. The Austin City Council is set to vote this week on a controversial proposal from lost in energy. Under this plan, the city would rely more heavily on natural gas when energy demand is high, but opponents worry it would be an environmental setback. Here to explain this is KUT’s energy and environment reporter, Moe’s Bouchel. Moe, thanks for being with us.
Mose Buchele [00:01:48] I’ll see you later.
Syeda Carillo [00:01:48] Hey, so Mo’s tell us about this story has to do with something called natural gas peaker plants. First off, what are those exactly?
Mose Buchele [00:01:57] Yeah. Peaker plants, peaker generators. The idea is these are natural gas power generators that can turn on quickly in times of peak energy demand. That’s why they’re called peaker plants. And so you kind of ramp them up quickly when the demand is high and the cost of energy is high on the Texas grid to answer those times, to answer that demand in those really tight times. And then you can turn them off quickly too when you don’t need that extra energy. That’s what Austin Energy is going to city council to ask essentially for approval to to negotiate for later this week
Syeda Carillo [00:02:31] Gotcha. Okay. Well, now the name makes sense. So, and we’re coming off of a couple of years of really high energy demand in the city, as you’ve reported on. What has Austin Energy said about their reasoning as to why the city needs to add these plants to the system.
Mose Buchele [00:02:47] So, it gets complicated real quick when you start talking about electricity in Texas, but essentially, the utility has run their own analysis that shows demand rising. They say that they have decommissioned, retired other natural gas plants in the last several years that has limited the amount of generation that we can do locally here. What they argue is that has led to higher energy costs, especially because of what is called congestion pricing. Essentially, we’re bringing in more and more electricity from places further away from our service area. The transmission lines, those electrons move on, our traffic jam, they’re all congested up and that adds extra costs when you buy that electricity here locally. The utility solution, among other things, they’re also advocating for more battery storage, more wind power contracts, other things or renewable power contracts. But this is these peaker this peaker plant or whatever it’s going to be, we’re not sure where it’s gonna be located yet, is the kind of key part of this. They say you got to put this thing in our service area to be able to ramp up during those times of high demand and it will solve some of that cost problem and that reliability challenge that they say is only going to increase again according to their analysis.
Syeda Carillo [00:04:01] Yeah, okay. So there’s also the question of meeting these ambitious environmental and climate-friendly goals that the city has set. So how has Austin Energy responded to some of the criticism that bringing on a plant like this would be a step backwards for sustainability?
Mose Buchele [00:04:17] Austin is a city that has pledged to go carbon neutral. Austin Energy initially had, you know, in the initial iteration of its kind of climate goals, it was just going to kind of cancel out all of its fossil generation. It wanted to be carbon-free power generation. It changed those goals a couple years ago, and it now says it wants to answer all the local customer demand with carbon- free power, but it still wants to allow itself the use some carbon burning, you know, some fossil fuel burning generation to help out around the edges, as we just described, with the peaker plants being a kind of example of that. So yes, there is a lot of controversy around this. A lot of people are saying that this is kind of abandoning Austin’s clean power goals, and they’re opposed to this. They think that maybe the city could answer these challenges with more big battery storage, demand response. Of course, the utility says that uh… It it doesn’t think so so that’s kind of where the debate is right now
Syeda Carillo [00:05:15] Right. And so this was sure to be a high profile discussion at City Hall this week. And one of the questions that’s inevitably going to come up is how much is this going to cost the city if this goes through? So Mo’s, can you tell us what is the price tag on this proposal?
Mose Buchele [00:05:29] We’re not supposed to know, Syeda. I’m serious. It’s supposed to be a big secret. The utility says that it does not want to disclose how much it might negotiate for these gas turbines, because that would put them at a competitive disadvantage. So they’re going to let city council know, but the public has not been informed of what the price for these generators might be. There are estimates that they could be up towards around a billion dollars around that for a new peaker plant or new natural gas generators that would serve that peaker function. So $1 billion is one of the estimates that’s been batted around.
Syeda Carillo [00:06:06] Wow, well, I can’t think of a better person to talk us through this very technical story than Moes Buchel, KUT’s energy and environment reporter. Thank you so much, Moes, for joining us and for breaking down this conversation with us. Thank you. With Memorial Day weekend fast approaching, a lot of Austinites may be getting ready to head out to Lady Bird Lake for the first time this year. But if they paddle east toward I-35, they’ll encounter a new obstacle — a construction zone on the water. As KUT’s Nathan Bernier reports, the Texas Department of Transportation’s massive I- 35 expansion has narrowed the passage between beneath the Interstate Bridge and some people on the lake say it’s already causing confusion.
Carol Baxter [00:07:01] Hi Nathan, how are you? Good, how’re you? Nice to meet you.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:04] Carol Baxter is managing director of the Austin Rowing Club. It’s a non-profit that’s downtown at the end of Trinity Street, right on Lady Bird Lane.
Carol Baxter [00:07:12] It’s I call it the best kept secret on the lake because nobody has this location of you and all that
Nathan Bernier [00:07:18] The club operates out of the Waller Creek Boathouse, which it rents from the city. On the top floor is exercise equipment.
Carol Baxter [00:07:26] So this is on land workout, otherwise known as maybe the torture chamber. No, just kidding.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:33] Downstairs are racks and racks of rowing boats. Some are made for one person. Others are as long as a school bus.
Carol Baxter [00:07:40] We can meet everybody where they are. We can teach you how to row. You can row recreationally here. We have people, you know, ages 21 to, we have people in their 90s rowing. So it’s kind of a lifetime sport.
Nathan Bernier [00:07:52] Turns out, Lady Bird Lake is one of the best places to row in the United States. It’s six miles long, relatively calm, open year round, and framed by city scenery. The only motorboats allowed have to use electric motors with no more than five horsepower, which keeps them slow. So rowers all over the country come to Lady Bird lake to train. But for the past few months, the lake has had a new pinch point. TexDOT is widening the I-35 bridge over Lady Bird Lake. That bridge is going from 13 lanes to 18 lanes, part of a multi-billion dollar expansion of the highway through Travis County. TexDot is also building a standalone pedestrian bridge just east of the interstate. And construction has already begun from barges on the water. So, since January, TxDOT has limited boat traffic under the I-35 bridge to a passage about 75 feet wide. That might sound like a lot, but Baxter says that space has to be shared by everyone in both directions.
Carol Baxter [00:08:56] So rowers, kayakers, fishermen, that kind of thing. So we express just safety concerns because that 75 feet, that is shared waterway for everybody that uses the lake.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:06] Textodd has installed buoys around the work zone. Baxter says the signage could be a lot better.
Carol Baxter [00:09:11] When you approach the bridge right now, from the water level you can’t necessarily see exactly. They all just say keep out. It’s a little harder to see from water level where the actual passageway is under the bridge. So we ask for lights, more signage.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:28] Construction already disrupted one of the Austin Rowing Club’s biggest events, an annual boat race they’ve been holding for more than 40 years, before the Heart of Texas regatta in February. Baxter says a construction barge damaged part of the club’s race course. They were able to scramble and get it fixed in time to hold the race. But now the Austin rowing club is rethinking its fall race because the normal course requires boats to pass under I-35. And the Austin rowing club is not the only one forced to adapt. A company called Retro Boats rents out vintage fiberglass watercraft from the 1950s and 60s. The boats are equipped with small electric motors. General Manager Helena Schar says they’ve changed the route they give customers to keep them away from the I-35 construction, but that keeps them in a more crowded part of the lake.
Helena Schar [00:10:14] It’s already just a really, really busy and popular part of the waterway with the kayaks paddle board companies here, another company down the way that way. And so it will just create a lot of congestion here in this area. We’re going to try to open it up down a little bit further, but we need to keep it safe still because we don’t want people getting too close to Zilker with all the kayakers and the paddle boarders hanging out down there.
Nathan Bernier [00:10:34] On a weekend afternoon when the weather is nice, Ladybird Lake can have more than a thousand paddleboarders on the water at one time, according to Austin Police Lieutenant Elijah Myrick. He oversees APD Lake Patrol. I met up with him near the I-35 bridge.
Elijah Myrick [00:10:47] I think this is probably not a great place for an amateur to deploy a paddleboard. If you’ve ever been on a paddle board before, you don’t just stop. They’re not equipped with anchors, right? So wind plays a concern. So there’s a lot of very dangerous stuff going on here that you need to avoid. You could easily float into an area that’s dangerous, and if you’re not a confident this is probably an area that I would avoid.
Nathan Bernier [00:11:06] Myrick says narrowing the waterway under I-35 could cause problems for people on the lake, especially with construction barges in the water, but he says they haven’t seen those problems yet, and they haven t really spoken much to Textodd about it either.
Elijah Myrick [00:11:19] The Lake Patrol unit has had minimal contact with TexDOT regarding this project. We do occasionally get infrequent updates from them regarding issues, but our deployment strategy has not really changed much based on what TexDot is doing down here.
Nathan Bernier [00:11:32] Textot says they don’t typically coordinate with law enforcement on how to manage a work zone unless there’s a specific problem. Willie Samora oversees construction for Textot’s 11-county Austin district, and he says building a highway bridge over a popular waterway is just extremely difficult.
Willie Samora [00:11:50] You’re working on the water, everything’s moving, right? And so we have cranes on barges, drilling rigs are on barge, anything you do things are moving, things are swaying. So just the general construction is certainly much more difficult.
Nathan Bernier [00:12:04] So Samora says they went with a 75-foot-wide passageway because it was the biggest they could go while still being able to get the job done. But he says they have no plans to add the additional lighting or buoy lines requested by the Austin Rowing Club.
Willie Samora [00:12:18] What we’ve done in our plan is there’s a number of buoys out there that identify where the work zone starts. It lines the 75 feet. They’re white buoys, so they’re bright. At this point, we’re not looking to make a change. We feel like that we’ve got it to a quality safe work zone. Obviously we’re always evaluating that though.
Nathan Bernier [00:12:42] The exact location of the 75-foot passage will shift as construction moves across the water. There are times where the passage may shut entirely. These restrictions will remain in effect until the I-35 bridge over Lady Bird Lake is done. And that could take until 2033. I’m Nathan Bernier in Austin.
Syeda Carillo [00:13:07] How photography is helping one woman reclaim her story after a life-changing loss. More on an upcoming community event where you can see some of that work. Plus, the Austin TV Festival is back for its 15th year. We’ll hear from the founder and co-president who sat down with host Jerry Quijano. That’s coming up on Austin Signal. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. Whitney Mitchell is ready to take back her story. She lost her limbs. Then lost her husband and felt like she lost her narrative in the media. Now, with a community event to tell her own story, she’s talking with documentarian and photographer Louise Min on Thursday evening. Austin Signal host Miles Bloxin spoke with Whitney and Louise on the event and their journey together. Just a heads up, the event name does have coarse language in it.
Miles Bloxson [00:13:59] Whitney, I want to start with you. You’ve been through these compounding tragedies. What did that do to your sense of identity?
Whitney Mitchell [00:14:08] It’s definitely like changed me over time and and it’s like it’s taken me some time to get back to myself and like find myself again and um I feel like with what we’re doing, this is the first time where I’m able to like tell my story from my own words and not have projections onto me or be put into like a certain box or if that makes sense. And so with this, like I’m hoping that people can understand where I am coming from.
Miles Bloxson [00:14:47] Yeah, it does make a lot of sense and thank you so much for being vulnerable with us today. And speaking of telling your own story, how did you find Luis and what made you decide to trust her with helping you tell your story?
Whitney Mitchell [00:15:01] Um, me and Louise started, um, becoming friends pretty much after Garrett passed away. And that was a really hard time for me. And she was there. For me through that period of time and I mean I just I felt like really comfortable with her. I could talk to her about anything and I’m so like excited to do this with her and she’s such an incredible person and an amazing storyteller so I’m just excited for everybody to see like.
Miles Bloxson [00:15:35] What we have going. It seems like she came into your life at the perfect time. Luis, what did you think when you first met Whitney and what made you decide to work on this project with her?
Louis Min [00:15:47] Well, we met, I was filming the Black Lives Matter protests, and then it happened, and then obviously this was a devastating time for Whitney. And then, so I was there as a friend, not as like a storyteller, by just spending time with her. There’s so much that I learned that I didn’t realize that I had no clue of. And then after a while, it became clear to me because Whitney told me that she did not like at all how she was portrayed and how people treat her and all that stuff And I was like, okay, what can I do? I’m a storyteller. So if you’re open for it, I’m happy to like build something out with you
Miles Bloxson [00:16:24] And you guys have an event coming up. Luis, what is the event called, and where can people find out more information about it? The event is called It’s With Me.
Louis Min [00:16:34] Bitch, if I can say it. Yeah, so the event is called, it’s Whitney Bitch. It’s this Thursday from six to eight p.m. At Future Front here in Austin. If you go to Eventbrite and you type in, it’s Whitney Bitch, then you’ll find all the information that you need. And what can people expect from attending this event? Okay, so we’re gonna have some pictures up, like a small exhibit, followed by a panel with some amazing people. Also, we’ll have some food, we will have some tacos. And then we end the night with some music by Anastasia Herrera.
Miles Bloxson [00:17:09] Gonna be pretty good. Which is one of my favorite artists in Austin. And Whitney, what do you hope people take away from this community conversation?
Whitney Mitchell [00:17:16] Just to like see like a different perspective. Of disability, which is also something that I feel like we don’t get to talk about often and also pretty much everything that I’ve dealt with like racism, ableism, and I just want people to like just see the truth of what happened and also just see like the humanity of me and just like pretty much anyone that’s kind of like similar in my condition.
Syeda Carillo [00:17:50] That was Whitney Mitchell and Louise Min talking with host Miles Bloxson on community perseverance and taking back one’s own story. We’ll have a link to that event on Thursday in today’s podcast show notes. We’re just a few days out from the ATX TV Festival. The self-built TV camp for grownups is now in its 15th season. Host Jerry Quijano spoke with Caitlin McFarland, founder and co-president of the festival, about what to expect at this year’s event.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:20] So we’re drawing near to the fest and the first thing that caught my eyes was a local reunion of sorts. Which show is getting the gang back together?
Caitlin McFarland [00:18:30] Which show? The Friday Night Lights is our big, murky, 20-year reunion since the season one and we couldn’t be happier to bring them all back.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:39] Are you a big fan of the show? Because I have to admit that I’ve never actually seen Friday Night Live.
Caitlin McFarland [00:18:44] Oh, get on it. I am a big fan of the show and the festival, which is celebrating our 15th season, had it at the first five years of the festival. So it’s a little bit of a homecoming for both us and them to host the creatives and the cast.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:00] That’s very cool. I have to admit that I read the book in high school and I saw the movie, so I think I was just Friday night lights out by that time. But I think I should circle back to it. I owe it to myself, I think, and maybe to the community as well. So you mentioned 15 years. Are you surprised to see that it’s 15 years? I mean, has it flown by? Has it been a lot of work? Reflect a little bit on 15 years of ATX TV Festival.
Caitlin McFarland [00:19:25] Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely been both. I think that we all have kind of a bit of a time warp when you think of even the past five or six years, in terms of looking back at all 15 seasons of ATX, you know, the first five or six just sort of felt like this little small secret. And then we had some really big years prior to COVID. We got to premiere Euphoria season one, and do a whole bunch of things around that. But then COVID sort of just slowed us all down for a little while, maybe in good ways and bad. So it definitely both feels like it has flown by and it has been, we’ve been doing this a while. We feel very prepared, but we’re excited to celebrate with Austin, to celebrate the television. We’ve got some really big partners coming back. So yeah, it’s just, it nickname is TV camp for grownups. And that really just solidifies what we try to do, which is like come talk about some of your favorite shows. Have a margarita, have a breakfast taco and you know celebrate it.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:24] Yeah, well Friday Night Lights is one of the shows that is going to be celebrated. What are the other shows being celebrated this season?
Caitlin McFarland [00:20:29] Yeah, we’ve got, um, sort of our bigger marquee stuff at the state and the paramount work, we’re kicking off the festival with season three of house of the dragon. So for the game of Thrones fans, um I personally was very upset at the end of season two of house with the dragon, not because of anything they did other than they build up to a very big battle that doesn’t happen. And so we’re taking off the opening night of the festival with a very large dragon battle. So I can’t imagine a more fun thing than to watch that on the big screen at the Paramount Theater. So HBO will be there with like cast and the creators. We’re also doing a Everybody Loves Raymond 30th anniversary with Ray Romano and Phil Rosenthal. Some people know him from somebody feed Phil at this point. So it’s really just gonna be kind of a comedy show of them telling real life stories of what made it to the screen in Everybody Loved Raymond. Um, but then we have, you know, I think one of the things that’s really cool about TV and what we try to do at the festival is we’re half fan and half industry. So we’ve got these reunions, these canceled too soon shows like Sweet Vicious, which stars Taylor Deardon, who’s now on the pit, um, that is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, but it was a one season show that people loved. But then we have, you know. Presidents of networks and studios talking about the current state of television and casting directors and music supervisors and just like all the things that make television, we’ve kind of got it scattered throughout the weekend in big and small ways.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:05] Yeah, and 15 years on, y’all are still doing new things. There’s a pilot showcase. Can you tell us a little bit about that competition?
Caitlin McFarland [00:22:12] Yeah, this is a first year of our indie TV pilot competition. So generally the thing that I think makes us really different from a film festival is we’re not submissions based. We’re not a lot of independent people submitting. We work with our network and studio partners, but the current state of TV and all the mergers and acquisitions and actually the state of film to and layer in Texas film and television incentives, we just thought this was the time to really talk about what independent TV is, which is definitely. Wild West beginning of trying to see if those types of shows can make it to your TV screen. So we did an open submission call. We got hundreds of submissions. We’ve picked three scripted pilots to show. We’re going to pick one winner, but really kind of talk about the parallels with independent film, but then the differences when you’re talking about making a pilot that now needs to be a whole show.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:06] Are there any shows that you’re anticipating or really wanting to see besides things that you’re going to be seeing soon at ATX TVFest?
Caitlin McFarland [00:23:13] Yeah, it is funny. We’re such a small programming team that a lot of the stuff that I’m looking forward to seeing are at the festival in one way or another. So House of the Dragon is definitely high on the list. I think it premieres June 21st, so we’re getting a first look at it, but it’ll be coming out, you know, each week over the summer. We also have a an Apple TV show called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed with Jake Johnson from New Girl and Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black. We’re actually showing episodes three and four of that. So it also will be kind of a week to week. Following the festival. So I’m just looking to sort of like get into those and catch up on some of the ones that maybe I’ve paused on because at this time planning the festival, it’s hard to watch new things. So like Man on Fire is one that’s on Netflix that I’m excited about, or Margot’s Got Money Troubles, which was actually at South by Southwest that is super fun. So, you know, I’m definitely going to dive into the television sphere following the as I now.
Jerry Quijano [00:24:12] We have been chatting with Caitlin McFarland, founder and co-president of ATX TV Fest. We’re gonna have more info about this year’s happenings in today’s show notes. Thank you, Caitlin. Thank you.
Syeda Carillo [00:24:25] And that’s it for us today on Austin Signal. Thank you to KUT’s Moze Bouchelle for joining us at the top of the show. And thanks to KT’s transportation reporter, Nathan Bernier for his reporting. Rene Chavez is our technical director today, Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer, and Alexandra Hart is our producer. I’m Syeda Carrillo. Thanks for being with us today on Austin signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
