Oh happy radio you

I am listening to a water coalition meeting happening right now in Bay City. Thanks to my happy radio DJ friends they are broadcasting the meeting live.

I do admit, I miss reporting in Matagorda County. It was small town, agriculture rice farming county where people knew their neighbors and everyone knew what everyone was up to. When I first started working there, I came in in the middle of at cat and dog fight with the city. You see, there were two newspapers in town, us...and the other paper. It was said that the other papers publisher was drinking buddies with the then, mayor in town and he had done some illegal activity that that paper never wrote about. Our paper on the other hand, the underdog (and I say that because the other paper was 100 years old and we were 15 at the time) and the community would always come to us to print the "real" news. Well, we had submitted some FOIA request to the city and in turn they refused, somehow the Attorney General was involved, telling the city they must allow us the paperwork and each time the city refused. It was a mess, but I started in the middle of it all. The other reporter had left and I was left with trying to sort through all the mess.

Now there's a new mayor in town and well, things were better. Anyway, what's the point to all this...I have stayed in contact with the radio station. I used to be on the radio every Thursday morning and talk about the paper when it would come out. One major thing we would cover was either the nuclear power plant or the drought and how it was effecting rice farming. I don't know how many times I drove to Austin for LCRA board meetings. I spoke to many rice farmers, walked the rice fields, spoke to many water specialists.

But even though I am no longer a reporter, I like to keep up with what's going on there. Right now they are trying to figure how to push their message to bring fresh water for farming. A lot of farmers have not been able to farm rice for about three years now, which in turn a lot of people can't work and many businesses are closing. 

Interested in reading my articles from then?

http://m.victoriaadvocate.com/staff/adriana-acosta/stories/

In the mean time, I shall go and relax for a bit. Work went well. Just three more days!