Wharton County

Across the state, at least 28,200 public school students have accepted vouchers.

In Wharton County, Amazon plans to build a 3,000-acre data center campus cleared a key hurdle when regulators approved groundwater permits needed for parts of the $10 billion project.

As a result of the permit approval, Amazon would be allowed to tap into millions of gallons of groundwater per year for its office buildings and fire protection at the data center campus.

In sports news, India has won 85 medals across 21 sports in the Asia Games about to conclude in Japan.

For four years, the identity of a teenage girl discovered in rural Texas remained a mystery.

In June twenty twenty-one, a property owner in Wharton County stumbled upon skeletal remains in a secluded brushy area off County Road two twenty-five.

The victim had been shot multiple times in the head, and with no name and few clues, she became known only as the Wharton County Jane Doe.

It wasn't until June two thousand twenty-five that authorities finally gave her a name.

She was sixteen-year-old Yeimi Mariquilla Beltran.

In fact, her mother did not report Yeimi missing until fifteen days later.

According to unverified accounts, the delay happened because Yeimi's mother received a disturbing phone call informing her that her daughter had been slain and she was in fear.

On June eighteenth, two thousand twenty-one, about two months after Yeimi disappeared, her remains were found in Wharton County, roughly an hour's drive from Houston.

The 713 Commute Mode, October 2, 2026.

In today's briefing, Amazon's Wharton County Data Center clears a hurdle, Galveston ISD is ordered to post the Ten Commandments, and Houston area school districts faced voucher-related funding losses.

But first, the weather.

Good morning, I'm Justin Ballard, the Houston Chronicle's meteorologist, and here's today's forecast.

Now,

the news.

Amazon's $10 billion plan for a 3,000-acre data center campus in Wharton County has cleared a key water permit hurdle.

The Coastal Bend Groundwater Conservation District approved permits last month for the data center's use of groundwater at parts of the project outside Houston.

I was not aware that we had oil and gas production in the Permian Basin and in the Valley and along a formation called the Austin Chalk, where my father worked for years.

He used to gauge oil and gas wells in southeast Texas down in Wharton County and then later up in the Giddings area.

That's the place where I would have visited my first Bucky's store when it was just a normal gas station.

But we have an oil and gas industry.

worked in the oil patch, and some people might be saying, oh, I thought you grew up on a farm.

Well, yes, he did both.

He was a farmer and he worked in oil and gas because when you are a guy gauging wells, natural gas and oil wells, you know, just for some rich people, like if you watch the show Landman, my father worked for an independent producer in Wharton County, just a rich person who had some oil and gas wells.

Neither of those jobs, farming and gauging wells, really pays very well, so he had to do both.

For four years, the identity of a teenage girl discovered in rural Texas remained a mystery.

In June 2021, a property owner in Wharton County stumbled upon skeletal remains in a secluded brushy area off County Road 225.

The victim had been shot multiple times in the head, and with no name and few clues, she became known only as the Wharton County Jane Doe.

It wasn't until June 2025 that authorities finally gave her a name.

She was 16-year-old Yemi Makiela Beltran.

In fact, her mother did not report Yami missing until 15 days later.

According to unverified accounts, the delay happened because Yami's mother received a disturbing phone call informing her that her daughter had been slain and she was in fear.

On June 18th, 2021, about two months after Yemi disappeared, her remains were found in Wharton County, roughly an hour's drive from Houston.