State Representative Allan Ritter received the Coastal Stewardship Award at this year’s American Shore & Beach Preservation Association and Texas General Land Office Fall Coastal Conference.

GLO Commissioner Jerry Patterson presented Ritter with the award in recognition of his dedication as a public servant whose efforts and leadership on behalf of Texas has made a lasting and significant contribution to the betterment of the TexasGulf Coast for generations to come.

“Representative Ritter understands the economic and environmental importance of the Texas coast and why Texas must fight to preserve it,” said Patterson. “His district is wellserved by his dedication to coastal stewardship. ”

“The Gulf Coast is an integral part of who we are as Southeast Texans. It is important that we do everything we can to ensure that we sustain it for future generations,” said Ritter.

Prices still are high for customers in the competitive areas, but they do have some choice.

Entergy is still regulated because its service territory is outside the in-state electric grid. Having an in-state grid is important for retailers because they are assured open access to lines to get the power they buy wholesale to their customers.

Since no such arrangement exists for Entergy, the Public Utility Commission has no choice except to keep regulating it as it does a handful of other electric utilities arranged around the state’s border areas.

However, the state still expects Entergy to make its transition toward competition. To do that, Entergy has to get into a grid that allows for competition. Its current grid, the Southeast Electric Reliability Council, which covers a lot of the southeastern United States, doesn’t have any retail competition and isn’t viewed favorably as a place to start.

Entergy wanted to get into the Texas grid. Last week, the Public Utility Commission just about said “no,” because its plans were too expensive. Instead, commissioners asked Entergy to look at another power grid called the Southwest Power Pool, which covers parts of northeast Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and parts of New Mexico and Colorado.

Entergy customers already are paying off more than $100 million in transition costs incurred since 2001 at a clip of about $1.08 per month.

During this year’s legislative session, state Rep. Allan B. Ritter, D-Nederland, tried to keep Entergy as a regulated utility because retail areas had higher rates. Ritter wanted to keep Entergy out of the Texas grid and keep it where it is. The bill passed the House and went nowhere in the Senate.

Ritter seems to have got part of his wish after all with last week’s action.

Meanwhile, Entergy has a rate increase request filed with the commission that would bring its rates for 1,000 kilowatt hours to about $130. That would put it about in the middle of the retail competitors in other parts of the state.

There are no guarantees that Entergy will get all or part of its request.

And all the customer wants is continuous service at a reasonable price.

From the utility’s viewpoint, it needs reasonable returns to stay financially healthy to give the customers what they want.

As Jefferson County property values rebound from Hurricane Rita’s effects, county officials learned that legislation promising tax cuts to energy industries won’t take effect until next year. The Jefferson County tax base continued to rise for the second year in a row, boosted this time by substantial increases in residential property values as residents finish renovating their storm-damaged homes, county auditor Patrick Swain said.

The certified tax roll released Monday by the Jefferson County Appraisal District quoted net taxable property values of $18.6 billion, roughly a 12 percent increase from last year’s $16.5 billion. The final figure had dropped only about 4 percent from preliminary appraised values of $19.4 billion after protest hearings.

County officials continue to monitor the possible effects of an energy bill originally crafted to foster the development of clean electricity sources. House Bill 3732 began to raise alarms in Jefferson County when language in the bill appeared to include refineries among the entities eligible for tax abatements under the legislation. The Texas Commission on Environmental Qualilty was charged with regulating the permiting process for equipment eligible for tax relief, and some fear that agency will overstep the bill’s intentions. Certain provisions of the law wouldn’t come into effect until Jan. 1, 2008, and if it is interpreted as its authors intended, it should have little effect on Southeast Texas, said Jeff Branick, an attorney in Jefferson County Judge Ron Walker’s office. “We’re still going to continue to monitor this very closely to make sure there aren’t any unintended effects,” Branick said. “We think the way the TCEQ is interpreting the bill is not the way the author intended. The county judge is very, very interested in this and officials from other groups are becoming involved: school districts, cities, etc.”

Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, is working with the Texas Conference of Urban Counties, the TCEQ and bill author Rick Hardcastle, R-Vernon, to try to resolve any disagreements, Branick said. The group will look at recommendations during a planning meeting in mid-August. A public hearing could be held later on any decisions that are made. Swain said the tax office still was working on the effective tax-rate calculation - that is, the rate that would generate the same income as this year. The calculation was awaiting additional information from the appraisal district. After that, the county would begin looking at what rate it could adopt without a rollback election. Commissioners have said they hope to decrease the tax rate.

By this afternoon, family members of students in the West Brook High School bus crash that killed two young women should know how a measure to require school bus seat belts fared in the Texas House of Representatives.

“I think we’ve got a good chance, said Rep. Mike Hamilton, R-Mauriceville.

“A lot of school bus seat belt bills have been filed in the past and this one will be the first one to see a floor vote,” he said by phone Saturday.

The legislation lawmakers will vote on Monday - combining bills by Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont and Hamilton - would give school districts more time to comply with the new law and gives the state until 2010 to finance the measure.

Hamilton said the revisions in the latest version, that cleared the Calendars committee on Thursday, give the bill a greater chance of passing.

School districts would be required to include seat belts in all buses purchased after Sept. 1, 2010, and charter buses, like the one in the West Brook crash, would be required to have belts in 2014.

The West Brook high School girl’s soccer team was involved in a bus wreck March 29, 2006 east of Devers that killed Ashley Brown and Alicia Bonura. The 23 team members and two coaches were en route to a play-off game in Houston.

Beaumont Independent School District began ordering buses equipped with three-point belts after the accident and has begun introducing the buses into its fleet.

One of the news buses will be in Austin today for legislators to see the belts.

Parents of those killed and injured in the West Brook soccer team bus crash have testified in House committee hearings and will be in Austin today for the vote.

A bill passed recently by the Texas House of Representatives offers protection to waterway ecosystems, proposes 19 new reservoir sites - and leaves junior water rights where they are.

Which is how Southeast Texas water officials want it.

Junior water rights give the basin of origin first dibs on the water that flows through it. Any contractual obligations to provide water to other regions are “junior” to the rights of the senior right holder.

In the event of a drought, junior water rights mean a region can refuse to deliver water until its own needs have been met.

This is more important than ever to Southeast Texas, where refinery expansions and a subsequent population increase will greatly increase the region’s water needs, water officials say.

Without these rights, the Legislature would have the power to determine the destiny - not to mention the destination - of Southeast Texas’ surface water, said Lonnie Arrington, Lower Neches Valley Authority legislative affairs chairman.

However, in a state where a dwindling water reserve is going to be serving the needs of a rapidly growing population, retention of senior rights by small regions means they’re going to have to play ball.

Junior water rights have been under attack every legislative session since 1997 and this session has been no exception.

Arrington and others said while in the past the region’s stance has been that the water is ours and we can do with it as we like, political realities demand that Southeast Texas be a team player.

“Texas has water shortages; we have excess water. We have to be willing to be proactive and help - it’s just that it’s not a free ride,” he said.

The bill offers protection to Texas wetlands by taking into account adequate freshwater inflows to bays and estuaries when parceling out water for various needs.

“Now these downstream flows are part of the formula used when diverting water for municipal and industrial needs,” state Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, said.

He and others say this is important for the health of Texas waterways.

“This will keep our bays and estuaries the way our good Lord wanted them to be - as a nesting ground for all our fish, shrimp and the like. Those have to be protected,” Ritter said.

The reservoirs are the most controversial aspect of this bill, he added.

Of those that would be considered under the bill, sites in Anderson and Cherokee are closest to Southeast Texas.

Others are in Freestone, Fannin, Red River, Franklin and Titus counties, according to the text of the bill passed by the house.

“There’ll be a whole long fight about flooding the dam to build the lake,” Ritter said. “We’ve had those fights a few times in East Texas.”

However, that part of the bill is only a recommendation, Shaun Davis, Ritter’s chief of staff, pointed out.

No funding has been allocated and no definite decisions have been made.

“These are the sites that should be considered,” he explained.

The sites of future reservoirs are still open “to be discussed and debated,” Arrington said.

The bill, known as Senate Bill 3, now is in a Senate committee, and Ritter expects it to pass the full Senate.

Another bill, authored by William Callegari, R-Katy, also takes a jab at junior water rights as a way for regions to control their own surface water.

Callegari says junior rights discourage water transactions from region to region.

However, others dispute this.

The real obstacle to water transactions is having the infrastructure to move the water in a cost-effective way, Ritter said.

House Bill 911 (aptly named as it is a terrorist action against junior water rights, Arrington joked) would eviscerate junior water rights.

Arrington believes that HB 911 won’t make it through the Legislature, but he said it still is important for residents to support their elected officials in the battle.

He gave good marks to Southeast Texas’ congressmen, who he said “marched in lockstep” on junior water rights, defending them ably so far.

State Rep. Allan B. Ritter filed a bill in the Texas House today that would keep Entergy Texas as a fully regulated utility, delaying an expensive move to the in-state electric grid, and keeping its customers from paying the kind of higher rates that are affecting customers in open-retail markets.

“Competition is not happening,” Ritter said, referring to the experience of the rest of the state. “Unregulated monopolies are still doing most of the business,” he said. “While we think competition might develop and might work, we don’t think it is right now,” he said. Ritter is a Nederland Democrat. His bill, House Bill 2818, has a companion on the Senate side, Senate Bill 1878, filed by state Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands. Ritter said the rest of the local legislative delegation has signed on to the bill.

Entergy Texas officials have estimated that connected to the in-state grid that makes retail open access a possibility would cost about $1 billion. Entergy Texas ratepayers al-ready are paying about $1.06 per month in their bills for earlier transition-to-competition costs incurred by the utility, which was required by the Public Utility Commission. That effort was suspended because Entergy was unable to unravel the regulatory tangle caused by multiple state jurisdictions that ultimately blocked retail providers from entering the Southeast Texas market. Ritter said the bill was referred to the House Regulated Industries Committee and should be considered soon.