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Austin to extend expiring stay-at-home rules, unenforceable mask mandate despite governor's order

Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt said that the city and county would extend the Stay Home-Work Safe orders when they expire on Friday, though they will be modified to comply with an executive order issued last week by Gov. Greg Abbott.
In the meantime, the current stay-at-home orders remain in effect, although certain elements are superseded by state rules.
"What we're talking about doing right here, right now, is trying to make the governor's order as successful as it can be," Adler said during a virtual press conference on Monday. "I want the governor's plan to succeed."
Abbott's order allowed certain businesses—including restaurants, movie theaters, malls and libraries—to reopen at limited capacity on May 1. It also explicitly prevented local jurisdictions from mandating that residents wear masks in public.
Before Abbott's order took effect, violating local mask orders was a criminal offense—though not an enforced one. (An April 13 press release issued by the city said the requirement was "substantially reliant on self-regulation," and a spokesperson for the Austin Police Department said Monday she didn't believe any citations were issued.)
Adler said he will continue and extend the local mask mandate, even though it is unenforceable.
"Well, we're going to keep face coverings mandatory in Austin and, in compliance with the Governor's new order, the only penalty for not wearing a face covering is that more people will get sick and some will die," Adler wrote in a May 2 email newsletter. "That should be penalty enough to keep us doing what's right by our community."
Nonetheless, the current city, county and state orders share some common ground.
Each prohibits social gatherings, although the language varies. The governor's order requires Texans to "minimize social gatherings and minimize in-person contact with people who are not in the same household." Local orders, on the other hand, prohibit all gatherings of any number of people.
With modifications, the local orders are now aligned with the governor's order on the subject of trips, which are limited to essential activities and recently opened businesses. Despite the governor's go-ahead, many local businesses have chosen not to reopen because of financial considerations and concern they may have to close again.
Additionally, Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk will determine when city facilities—such as the Austin Animal Center and Austin Public Library branches—will reopen. "The City Manager advised that CIty operations will remain unchanged from the previous weeks to support the phased-in approach of opening our economy, and he extended city facility closures through at least May 29, 2020," a city spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
Local elected officials and Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott have raised concerns that the governor's reopening plan is rash and risks a second surge in COVID-19 cases. Updated modeling, released publicly last week, shows that if social distancing rates fall below 80%—from the current rate of around 90%—COVID-19 cases will surge and overwhelm area hospitals.
"We have built a parachute in this community that is working," Eckhardt said at the Monday press conference. "And we should not let go of that parachute until we hit the ground. We're not there yet."
While the local orders have been modified to comply with state rules, they may soon be overruled again. Last week, Abbott said he may initiate the second phase of his reopening plan as soon as May 18, as long as a second surge in COVID-19 cases does not occur.
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(U.S. Marshals)
The Austin woman suspected of killing star cyclist visiting from out of town, Moriah "Mo" Wilson, has now been captured after evading arrest for more than a month.
Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, an Austin yoga instructor, is believed by officials to be the killer of Wilson, who was found with gunshot wounds in a friend's house on May 11. The murder is being investigated as a crime of passion after Wilson met up with Armstrong's ex-boyfriend.
According to the U.S. Marshals, Armstrong was located at a hostel on Santa Teresa Beach in Provincia de Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Officials said she may have been using her sister's name after fleeing Austin on May 14, the day after police questioned her. She was last identified at Newark Liberty International Airport on May 18.
Federal authorities say they plan on returning Armstrong to the U.S., where she'll face charges of murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Here's a timeline of events since the night of Wilson's murder.
- The night of her death, Wilson met with Armstrong’s ex-boyfriend Colin Strickland, a fellow pro cyclist. According to an affidavit, the pair went swimming, then to dinner, before he dropped Wilson off at her friend's home where she was staying in East Austin at around 8:30 p.m.
- While Wilson and Stickland had previously had a romantic relationship, Stickland said the two were friends. The affidavit says Strickland lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts that evening.
- Video footage shows Armstrong’s Jeep pulled up nearby the home within a minute of Wilson arriving home.
- At around 10 p.m., Wilson's friend called Austin police after finding her in a pool of blood. Wilson had been staying with the friend ahead of the upcoming bike race in nearby Hico, Texas.
- Armstrong was brought in for questioning the day after the murder and released after appearing “very still and guarded” when confronted with video evidence.
- The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force said her black Jeep Cherokee was sold to a South Austin CarMax dealership on May 13 for $12,200.
- She leaves from the Austin airport on May 14.
- Shell casings found on the scene matched a gun belonging to Armstrong.
- Austin police obtained an arrest warrant for Armstrong on May 17.
- She took a flight from Newark Liberty International Airport to San Jose, Costa Rica on May 18 using a fraudulent passport, according to the Marshals.
- On May 25, another warrant was obtained for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
- On June 29, she was captured by the U.S. Marshals
As the EPA faces limits on greenhouse gas regulations, Texas researchers work on carbon capture tech
UT is developing technology targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions. (UT Austin)
On Thursday, the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in regulating greenhouse gases, a move that comes at a time when experts have warned about the need to take action on climate change.
The ruling was brought after a challenge to a lower court opinion brought by Texas and more than a dozen other states.
Vaibhav Bahadur, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin called the SCOTUS decision significant, noting that Texas is the biggest energy producer in the U.S., and produces more energy than the United Kingdom.
“Power generation accounts for a significant fraction of U.S. carbon emissions, and the EPA loses its ability to control what's happening in about half of that sector,” Bahadur said. “And it's not just the U.S., I think people and environmentalists on pretty much anywhere on the planet will be disappointed because this is going in the wrong direction. We know we want to be decarbonizing, and this is essentially putting a roadblock on progress toward decarbonization.”
So, we’re going to need some insurance, Bahadur says. He’s carrying out work that’ll act as such through his research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the process of sucking carbon from the air and burying it.
For the past five years, he’s been working on a novel approach to storing carbon. It involves supercharging the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures and storing billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor.
“If all of this is successful, then we will have another option for safely and responsibly storing carbon at the bottom of the seabed for essentially eternity,” Bahadur said.
Still, Bahadur talked about a different approach to responsibly cutting down emissions in the next decade, and doing so in a meaningful and substantial way, then the environment will eventually heal itself and we might not need CCS.
But that’s not the path we’re headed down.
“We're already starting to see temperature records being shattered this year, and we're still to hit peak summer,” Bahadur said. “All of this just makes me think that we need CCS to a larger extent, and possibly sooner than what a lot of scientists anticipate, especially if we can't keep our emissions in check.”
Gary Rochelle, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at UT, thinks CCS was ready to be deployed in 2010 and those 12 years have made a difference.
“But now we've emitted all that CO2,” Rochelle said. “And unfortunately, unlike other pollutants, when you emit CO2, it's there. It's not going away.”
Gary Rochelle and Vaibhav Bahadur are both researching technology to address carbon emissions. (UT)
Still, the delay is good in that now researchers like him have had time to learn about and improve the technology, allowing for fewer problems once it's deployed.
In December, UT announced a licensing agreement with advanced technology company Honeywell. The technology from that is targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions.
Rochelle has been working on the technology since 2000 as part of an international collaborative effort. When he talked to Austonia on Thursday, he had just had calls with collaborators in Germany and Norway. Currently, he’s working with some Ph.D. students on addressing a chemical reaction that can happen with the technology known as oxidation that could lead to ammonia emissions and cause problems for a large-scale commercial unit.
Rochelle says he’s driven to this work because he wants to make a contribution.
“We're trying to develop this technology so that we can make a difference,” Rochelle said. “It's a nice problem to work on. The students are motivated and those are the primary things which drive us.”
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the high court’s decision which acted as a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce emissions.
“Today’s landmark victory against an out-of-control administration is also a big win for Americans who worry about skyrocketing energy costs due to expensive federal regulations that threaten our energy industry,” Abbott said. “President Biden cannot keep attacking the energy industry and the hardworking men and women who power our nation.”
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