Fort Worth's Top 15 List

Read Durango's Top 15 list.  Sad, but true. 

Do something about it. 

We won't give you the whole list, because YOU should read the whole post, but here are a few of our favorites.

I don't know if I can come up with 15 reasons Fort Worth is a strange city, but I will try...

1. The downtown park that celebrates Fort Worth's Heritage, and beginnings, is a boarded up, cyclone fence surrounded eyesore.
2. A billion dollars is being spent on a public works project to build a little lake, some canals, an un-needed flood diversion channel and other nonsensical things, in a Boondoggle called the Trinity River Vision that the public has not voted on.
3. The freeway exits to Fort Worth's top tourist attraction, the Fort Worth Stockyards, are un-landscaped, littered, weed infested eyesores.
9. Fort Worth is the world's experimental test tube for urban natural gas shale drilling, with more holes poked than any other city in the world.
12. Fort Worth allows Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats in the Trinity River in which raw sewage is known to flow.

Instead the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has not devoted any ink to doing any investigative reporting of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, the nepotism that gave J.D. Granger the job of running the project, J.D.'s mother Kay's use of earmarks to get federal funds for the project that gave her son a job or any of the other questionable aspects of the TRV Boondoggle that would be questioned by the newspaper in a town with a real newspaper.

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Behind the Woodshed

It's opening, again.  Or so they say, again.

The taxpayer funded restaurant in a flood plain is set to open in February.  If you're one of those that think it's cool to go eat at a restaurant you paid to build for a "celebrity", you might want to go before the next storm comes.  You saw what happened to the other "flood control" attraction you paid to build.

It's all just a matter of time.

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Wanna Wakeboard?

The Cowtown Wakeboard park, part of the Trinity River Vision "flood" control project in Fort Worth, failed to save anyone from flooding today.  Apparently, it couldn't even save itself.

The Trinity River took back the wakeboard park.  And left a sign of just how clean the river is.  Remember that when they invite you to Tube the Trinity during the Rockin' the River events brought to you by the Trinity River Vision Authority and the Tarrant Regional Water District.

With all the flooding footage today, WHY did you not see any of the wakeboard park?  Ask.

While you're at it, ask what it cost YOU and what it's going to cost YOU to repair it.  After all, it's YOUR money.

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What's in the Trinity River?

Toxins, PCB's, amoebas, fecal matter, contaminated run off, and pig blood.

How did the pig blood get into the Trinity River?  By way of a sewer pipe and a creek.  One of the many tributaries of the river.

If you think the Columbia Pig people are the only corporation dumping in the river, think again. Think they are the only corporation with illegal pipes running to the river?  Think again. 

If you think you want to tube the Trinity River with the Tarrant Regional Water District and the Trinity River Vision, think again.  Don't be sheep.  Think.

Notice this story started with THE PEOPLE.  Thanks to those eyes in the sky another problem with the Trinity River was brought to THE PEOPLE.  Seems some had been complaining about the dumping for years.  Too bad no one was listening.  Kudos to the air team.  We need more up there.  Any volunteers?

See the video on WFAA.com.

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That's weird...

FW Weekly wonders why the Fort didn't make the weird list.  Yeah, us too.

City leaders took such pride in Fort Worth being named one of the country’s most livable large cities of the 2000s, and then invited gas drillers to invade neighborhoods. That’s pretty weird.

Or how about those Trinity River Vision players inviting residents to come swim in the Trinity River near downtown and watch concerts? That’s odd seeing as how the water has long been considered feces infested and filthy and was untested at the time of the invitations.

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It's about damn time

Finally...Last year our readers asked Channel 8 why they would promote tubing in the Trinity River, during the same newscast that they honored the child who died from bacteria in the Paluxy River. Since the Trinity River Vision (headed by JD Granger, son of our Congresswoman, Kay Granger) and the Tarrant Regional Water District were urging people to Tube the Trinity without 'testing the water' so to speak.

Nothing was ever done. You know the rest, it just got worse. All summer long those appointed to protect you and YOUR water spent your money to advertise to you to 'Jump on in'. Do sheep swim?

Channel 8 tested it, finally. And guess what? The river is kind of like the Vision, full of fecal matter. Didn't TRIP (www.savethetrinityriver.org) tell us that? We heard some of the same things at their meeting last week. We hear their about to tell you something else. YOU won't want to miss it. We also hear the TRVA and the TRWD will now start testing the water, that's what we need, more special interests regulating themselves. That's going to cost us, in one way or another.

WHY has the river not been tested till now? Timing is everything.

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Trinity River Vision Unraveling

First, in Dallas.

And a man being threatened with his livelihood for telling the truth and saving lives.  Hey Fort Worth, any of this sound familiar yet?  Wait till they start asking questions on this end of the Trinity River.

Read, Drowning the Whistleblower on the Doomed Trinity River Wave in the Dallas Observer. 

Again, you can't make this stuff up.

For two weeks I have been trying to get someone at City Hall to tell me who is responsible for the unbelievably screwed-up man-made kayaking rapids in the river.

And then the money. The thing started out at a planned cost of $1.5 million. The city now has invested more than $4 million. The park board voted last week to spend another $76,000 to pay an engineering firm to find out what's wrong with it. Then I assume we'll have to pay some more to fix it.

 "The design was a team approach with various civil, structural, and hydraulic designers as well as planners and landscape architects, local and out of state."

Now what we have is a mess that can't be used, from which the public is barred, at a cost already four times the original estimate, with the cost of litigation about to be added to the tab.

The week before the wave was to be opened to the public, I wrote a column quoting Allen. I suspect the appearance of that column had a lot to do with the city's very belated decision to close the wave to the public the same day they held the dedication ceremony.

Since then, Allen, who earns his living renting out canoes and guiding, has been the target of what I can only describe as a City Hall vendetta. The city attorney recently notified Allen by letter that he will be arrested if he enters the park area around the Dallas Wave in order to launch canoeing parties downriver from a place below the wave.

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WHAT'S in the Trinity River?

On one end of town THEY spend lots of taxpayer dollars telling YOU to "Jump on in"! 

On the other end of town THEY tell YOU where the storm/sewer drains to. 

Ironic?  Idiotic?  Irresponsible?

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Not Rocking on the River

Would you get in the Trinity River?  We asked an average, lifelong Tarrant county citizen this question last week.  After they quit laughing hysterically, they told us in no uncertain terms, they would NEVER get in the Trinity River and the reasons why.  However, we can't repeat all that here.

Durango has some reasons why.  Between him and TRIP, we think they've got it covered.

Anyone seen the release form you have to sign to Tube the Trinity with the Trinity River Vision and the Tarrant Regional Water District?  There's a reason for the form, there are many of them.

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Right on the Money

A letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram speaks volumes.  There's no abundance of water but while the city goes broke, the Tarrant Regional Water District and the Trinity River Vision Authority seem to have an abundance of money.  Someone should ask the gas drillers and the politicians where they got it? 

Trinity travails

Tubing on the Trinity, skiing on the Trinity, wakeboarding on the Trinity, kayaking on the Trinity -- we have all this while area lake levels are dropping at what should be an alarming rate.

Please tell me I'm not the only lifelong resident of Fort Worth who remembers when crossing the Trinity most summers meant not getting your feet wet.

The Trinity River Vision in conjunction with the Tarrant Regional Water District is wasting our most precious resource by creating the illusion of an abundance of water in downtown Fort Worth.

By now, economic development by the water district should be considered a clear conflict of interest. How do you draw new business into a region where lake levels are at double-digit lows, where they will be soon, and where future water resources are a question mark?

Tubing on the Trinity is not the answer.

-- Keith Charles, Fort Worth

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TRV aka - Kay's Swamp

That is the title of the email we received.  Read along and remember, it could happen to YOU.

TRV HAS WON! After being near downtown for 58 years...

ALLIED FENCE IS MOVING ON JUNE 17, 18, 19th.

I have served my country, worked for my dad, Bill, all my life in the fence business.  The pressure and loss of sleep has taken its toll on me.  TRV will pay for one move, not two!  They will not give me time to build a new place.  TRV says, "Go, Go, Get out now".  So now I will be out about $50,000 to move, they don't care - get out!!  This is what you don't see in the paper or on the news.  Why not??

Good question.  WHY doesn't the "news" report on the existing businesses being railroaded by the Trinity River Vision?  Ask them.  NOW.

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If your friends jumped off a bridge...

Would you?

With the Trinity River Vision Authority tube the Trinity Happy Hour float kicking off today, we thought it was appropriate to remind you WHY you don't want in the Trinity River.
Next time the Tarrant Regional Water District or the Trinity River Vision Authority tells you to "jump on in" or Tube the Trinity River, remember this...and this...and this.

Don't buy the BS.  YOU can't afford it.

We like the new Tarrant Regional Water District logo.  (Wonder what that rebranding cost YOU?)  Looks a lot like the Trinity River Improvement Partnership logo.  We're sure it's just a coiencidence.

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Trinity River Drowning

Fort Worth City officials presented two firefighters with awards at the recent City Council meeting for saving some folks from drowning on the Trinity River in Trinity Park.

Last year a man drowned there while trying to save his daughter.

Is this the reason the Tubing on the Trinity was moved?  Or was it the reason Durango pointed out?

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Fort Worth Flooding

This flooding video was shot yesterday in Fort Worth by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

The Trinity River Vision has been touted as a "flood control" project from the start, so they could receive Federal funds (earmarks). 

So what is the Trinity River Vision Authority up to these days?  Tubing on the Trinity for Happy Hour, what else?  Sound like flood control to you?  Read about it here. 

The Trinity River Vision is providing 600 free inner tubes. Do those getting the free inner tubes get to take them home with them? How much do 600 inner tubes cost? Is buying inner tubes what voters thought they were voting for back in 2004 when, apparently, a bond vote occurred which some claim is what has validated the TRV foolishness and folly which has evolved into massive Happy Hour Inner Tube Parties on the Trinity River?

Starting June 9, Josh Weathers and the True+Endeavors, along with other Texas acts, will make beautiful music from a waterfront stage, serenading the happy hour floaters out in the river, dodging snakes, turtles, alligator gar, assorted toxins and occasional floating fecal matter.

Now, if there is a fatal tragedy, like what happened in the Fort Worth Water Gardens, who is it who will be sued? The Trinity River Vision? The City of Fort Worth? The Tarrant Regional Water District? All of them? Who will pay?

Ultimately You?

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