October 2019, Vol. 246, No. 10

Editor's Notebook

Pipelines Have Been Here All Along

If you read anything about the pipeline planned for the Hill Country, you will get the clear yet misleading impression that, while the rest of Texas is marred by oil and gas infrastructure, the Hill Country is virgin territory, untouched by the footprint of one of the state’s most important industries. The Permian Highway Pipeline Project, to employ the most popular metaphor used by the opposition, would “scar the Hill Country.”  The assumption that the Hill Country has thus far been preserved from the energy industry is presented without proof, an unchallenged assertion based, as near as I can tell, on this logic: A pipeline would pose an unacceptable risk, if not certain harm, to the gold