Legacy of UT's oil wealth: a denuded landscape
by Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
Investors appealed to the patron saint of impossible causes when oil drilling began on University of Texas System land in 1921. Since then, the UT System's 2.1 million acres in West Texas have produced $4.4 billion in royalty payments and other mineral income for the Permanent University Fund, an endowment that supports the UT and Texas A&M University systems. But this long-running bonanza for higher education exacted a price from the remote, semiarid landscape where it all began.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN , 7/7/2008