Wise words -

from one of our favorite wise men in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram Letters to the Editor.

Squandered dollars

A July 4 AP story told about a group of preservationists, history buffs and civic leaders in Fishkill, N.Y., trying to save the final resting place of hundreds of Revolutionary War soldiers posted in Fishkill when it was the main supply source for Gen. George Washington’s northern army. Commercial development has whittled the wooded parcel down to 12 acres hemmed in by roads, a shopping mall, gas station and Mexican restaurant. "They didn’t fight and die for independence just to have a mall built on top of them," said one history buff.

Where are the history buffs, preservationists and neighborhood leaders in Fort Worth? Surely Nature and Nature’s God didn’t cause the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River to flow together with a sense of law and beauty in a picturesque confluence below towering bluffs just to be covered by a so-called 33-acre town lake, in time to become silted in and bottomed with contaminated sludge. Unthinkable!

Why are our neighborhood organizations mute? What would residents have? Desecration of our most prominent historical landmark? Bitterer tears will flow over the loss of the confluence than ever were shed over the Tarrant County College fiasco. Do we want a 33-acre mercury- and chemical-laden stock pond whose fish cannot be eaten and in whose polluted waters we dare not permit our children to swim? Do we want higher taxes? No!

Neighborhood associations: Next time your City Council representative appears before you, ask him/her this question: "How do you justify squandering our tax dollars on this costly boondoggle?"

— Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth