Top City?

When Fort Worth was named a top city, we wondered, top of what? 

Failing schools? Embarrassing ISD? Corrupt Politicians?  Committing taxpayers to debt?  Eminent domain cases? Worst air quality?  For running out of water?  Or contaminating it?

We weren't the only ones wondering, check out the short and sweet letter to the editor in Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

All choked up

So Fort Worth is an award-winning city? Guess the judges sat in their offices at their computers and didn't come down here to breathe the highly polluted air we enjoy. I would have thought that would be a main criterion for a top city.

-- Christina Davis, Fort Worth

Read More

Calling Grand Prairie....

And Lewisville, and Flower Mound, and....are YOU next?

In January, we told you the gas drillers were coming.

Today, you get a heads up from a South Grand Prairie Watchdog.

Beware.

People in Grand Prairie need to look into RULE 37 that lets the gas company take your mineral rights without any compensation. BEWARE if you receive a letter from the Railroad Commission. If you do not file protest within the short period of time the RRC will give the gas company the ok to suck the minerals out from under your property. South Grand Prairie is currently under siege by the gas company and these letters are showing up. You MUST fight for your rights.

In addition to filing the protest, you'll have to drive to Austin to contest it.

And they are coming for you too, Lewisville.  Consider yourself warned.

Check out the Rule 37 cases in Flower Mound.  And learn a thing or two about WHO is connected, here.

Read More

Dear Congresswoman Granger -

Your letter to some of your "Friends" states -

America has had enough. Enough reckless, wasteful spending. Enough piling up more and more debt. You deserve to know the truth about America’s budget, and it’s my responsibility to make sure you have the real information. No budget tricks, no more gimmicks, and no more empty promises.

American families have had to tighten their belts and learn to do more with less. So should Washington.
 
Some people claim it's just more campaign rhetoric to cover yourself, some claim it's because you can't decide which side of the aisle you're on, some say they don't believe anything you say.

We say - Prove it.

Put OUR money, where YOUR mouth is.

You want us to believe YOU?

Then stop letting OUR water district spend OUR money and pay YOUR son to tell us (sell us) to get in the polluted river.  Stop letting them take taxpayers land to give to large campaign donors and developers.  Stop committing us and our children to more debt. Stop letting corporations suck water out of our drought stricken river.  Stop letting the Army Corp of Engineers try and move the course of the river.  Stop letting the NCTCOG (North Central Texas Council of Governments) spend OUR money.  Help your constituents in Tarrant County fix our roads, our infrastructure, our air.  Help us get our kids back to school and open the libraries and pools.

That grotesque amount of money being made from the gas drillers, if not going to benefit the taxpayers it belongs to, should instead be poured back in to finding solutions for when we run out of clean, usable water and to fix the flooding problems in Tarrant County and clean up the waterways that are full of trash, bacterias and PCB's.... Not so the New Kids on the Block can run up and down 7th street and jet off to Vancouver. 

So when you give up your billion dollar pet project (which is OUR money) for the good of ALL the citizens in your district, we might buy it.  Until then, business as usual.

Read More

Trinity River Sewage Water

A Texas Tribune story about the Trinity River made the New York Times a few weeks ago.  Too bad Texans aren't listening.

Thank goodness the Watchdog was.

Next time Granger and Company - the Trinity River Vision Authority, City of Fort Worth, the Tarrant Regional Water District, the 7th Street gang, tells you to come on down and tube the Trinity River, you might want to remember this...

The state has a number of projects that send treated sewage water back into major water systems, albeit somewhat less directly. One of the newer ones is in the Tarrant Regional Water District, which serves Fort Worth, Arlington and a few other cities. The project, in operation since 2009, sends some water from the Trinity River (which is highly polluted, due partly to discharges from wastewater-producing plants, including Fort Worth’s) through a specially constructed wetland area and into a reservoir, where it will be reused in the water system. That project is set to expand over the coming decade.

You might also notice, the above mentioned tend to stay on the banks on the river.

Read More

Texas Drought

Yahoo news does a story on a Texas lake turned blood red.

Why are the fish dead?
From a bacteria that thrives in oxygen deprived water.

Chromatiaceae bacteria.

WHO keeps telling you to come on down and get in the Trinity River for a float, on a tube?  The Tarrant Regional Water District and/or their corporation, the Trinity River Vision Authority. 

The article says many West Texas reservoirs have done dry.  Some are calling it the end of times...well, what do you think happens when WE run out of water?

We're in a drought, you know.

There is a comment on the article that seemed to sum it up.....

We should not be so worried about God ending the world, because we are doing a pretty good job.

Drought doesn't just apply to the weather...pay attention.  YOU can't afford not to.

Read More

New 7th Street Gang?

The Fort Worth Weekly does a good job shining the light on some of the issues 7th street and the surrounding neighborhoods face.  

We've had the same parking problems there.  If you want to visit those businesses in the area that are growing without the help of the NCTCOG or tax abatement's, you'll have to find somewhere to park.  Those garages on Morton Street aren't for the Morton Street customers...

By the way, where does the COG get all this grant money?  WHO approves what it is spent on?

Afterward, the group spent about 45 minutes at Capital Bar, listening to music and having a few drinks. When they went back to the garage, the car was gone.

“When we asked where our car was, the security guard said he saw us going into Capital Bar right after we parked,” Turner said. “But then we told him we were at Delaney’s. He said ‘You didn’t go there.’ We showed him the receipt from Delaney’s, and he still said we had violated their policy. He was extremely rude.”

Turner and her husband saw a Fort Worth Police patrol car on the street and asked for help. The officers intervened and convinced the security guard that he’d had the car towed illegally and should get it back for the Turners. The security guard agreed, and the towing charges were dropped. But the Turners had to pick up the car at a lot in east Fort Worth. The whole ordeal took about two hours, she said.

“I was seven months pregnant at the time, and here I am traipsing through a tow yard in the dark to get my car,” Sarah Turner said. “My husband and I have decided we won’t go to any restaurant or bar in the development because of what happened.”

State and federal public funding comes from “sustainability grants” through the North Central Texas Council of Governments. To qualify, projects must include higher-density housing and mixed-use retail, which in turn is expected to improve pedestrian mobility and get cars off the road.

So7 received $4.3 million from NCTCOG for construction of Museum Way for better access from West 7th, plus sidewalk improvements. Of that, $1.7 million is paying for a pedestrian bridge now being built over the Trinity River just to the east.

Museum Place received $2.4 million from NCTCOG for the reconstruction of West 7th Street in front of its property, along with streetscape improvements. The development also earned $192,000 in city tax abatements for 2011 on its completed first phase, the eight-story office/condo tower and the new 7-Eleven store with five housing units above it. The next phase, involving the apartment complex, must be finished by the end of 2012 to meet the abatement agreement terms, and Pettigrew said he expects to make that deadline. However, phases three and four — which will include another apartment mixed-use development and a hotel — must be completed by the end of 2013, and that is unlikely.

“We will probably ask the city for an extension for those phases,” he said.

Fort Worth is providing help through two other programs, one involving grants to bridge funding gaps and ensure that projects get completed and the other involving enhanced infrastructure. In both, developers negotiate terms with the city, involving the number of jobs to be created, the percentage of work that will go to local firms, the amount of private money to be raised, and completion dates on various parts of the project.

Montgomery Plaza has a 21-year tax-abatement agreement covering all property and sales taxes. This year, those benefits will total $835,000. In addition, the development got $172,000 for the infrastructure improvements.

Cypress Equities negotiated a 15-year tax abatement on 75 percent of its property taxes but won’t realize any of those savings until the whole project is finished, by the end of the year.

Read More

Air Quality and Your Family

Open Letter to Members:

Since our inception,  the North Central Texas Communities Alliance has been involved with encouraging the EPA to enact stronger Air Regulations for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry.  One of our very first speakers was newly appointed Region 6 Administrator Dr. Al Armendarez (February 2010) in one of  his first  public presentations in the DFW area after his appointment.

We know that Dr. Armendarez's  knowledge about natural gas  drilling in the higher density population areas  of the DFW Metroplex, the Barnett Shale, and Texas  has been a tremendous asset in moving forward these much needed safeguards.  His first priority always has been and remains the protection of the CITIZENS' health and safety.  We are grateful for  his awareness and diligent  efforts in this regard, and for the EPA's  follow through on the requests of the CITIZENS.

Please circulate this to your family, friends, colleagues  throughout Texas and beyond, and encourage them to do the same.  And then, a "thank you" email to our Region 6 EPA Administrator Dr. Al Armandarez, would also be appropriate and welcome!

Details of the proposed rule can be found at the following EPA website.  The website will contain the press release and more detailed information. http://www.epa.gov/airquality/oilandgas/actions.html

Here are some key points to remember about the announcement:

• On July 28, 2011, to meet a court-ordered deadline, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose a suite of highly cost-effective regulations that would reduce harmful air pollution from the oil and natural gas industry while allowing continued, responsible growth in U.S. oil and natural gas production.
• The proposals are based on proven technology and best practices that the oil and gas industry is using in some states today.  It will include the first federal air standards for wells that are hydraulically fractured, along with requirements for several other sources of pollution in the oil and gas industry that currently are not regulated at the federal level. 
• The proposals include four (4) air regulations for the oil and natural gas industry; 1) a new source performance standard for volatile organic compounds (VOC's); 2) a new source performance standard for sulfur dioxide; 3) an air toxics standard for oil and natural gas production and 4) an air toxics standard for natural gas transmission and storage. 
• The proposals would cut emissions of smog-forming VOC's , air toxics such benzene, and sulfur dioxide.

North Central Texas Communities Alliance 
Follow us at www.nctca.net, and let us know how we're doing.

Read More