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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