"Boneheads"

A letter writer in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram makes some interesting points. 

What it all really boils down to is, they can't add.  Well, they can, they are just betting on YOU not doing the math.  WHAT would happen if YOU started adding it up?  WHO would the city councils and "news" answer to then?

Ask where YOUR money is going.  Then ask, WHY?

In addition to the letter, here are more examples of questionable math -  having to be pointed out by THE PEOPLE.    Isn't that what a newspaper should do?

From Durango and a letter writer concerning streetcars -

The TRV Boondoggle Drive-In propaganda promoters are saying they anticipate around 300,000 TRVBDIT (Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Drive-In Theater) movie goers a year.

That works out to about 822 paying customers a day.

That sounds believable. Sort of like how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and its propaganda co-horts claimed 7 to 8 million visitors a year to the Fort Worth Cabela's sporting goods store would make Cabela's the top tourist attraction in Texas. With apparently no one doing the math to see how unlikely was a daily average of around 22,000 visitors to a sporting goods store.

_____________________________

Granger could have said 10 developers; it would sound better. He also said they expect 15,000 to 25,000 residents. Why not say 250,000? That's a number pulled out of the air, too.

Another Monday article said 40 units were sold in the past year within blocks of the Trinity Project. (See: "Rising to the challenge," Monday) How do you get from 75 people to 15,000? Oops; it's "streetcars."

_____________________________

Z Boaz costs

The Wednesday story by Bill Hanna had some frightening money facts. (See: "Council votes 6-1 to close Z Boaz")

The bonehead move by the Fort Worth City Council will cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

How? Follow the money. The current annual loss for Z Boaz is $250,000 per year. The capital cost to convert Z Boaz to some kind of park is at least $6 million.

The cost to run the park will be $150,000 annually. Amortize all that over 30 years, and here is what they have done to you: The 30-year cost for a park will be $10.5 million. The 30-year cost for Z Boaz as a golf course would be $7.5 million. The increase is $3 million.

Spread that cost increase over the same 30 years and note that your City Council just saddled you with $100,000 per year in extra costs.

Well done, politicians. And they wonder why we voters say, "Throw the bums out!"

Maybe the Fort Worth voters should let their council member hear their voices.

-- Ken DuBoise, North Richland Hills

More Startlegram Censorship

The Fort Worth Weekly gives you the scoop. 

Good thing there's a real paper in town.

People keep asking

Why did I learn about this in the New York Times?

Read the letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  So, what's the answer?

Seeking full disclosure\

A warm, nostalgic article in Friday's Texas editions of The New York Times informed me that the Star-Telegram is shuttering its fabled Austin bureau, once the workplace of Molly Ivins, Ken Bunting, Sam Kinch and Karen Potter, who broke important news stories on state politics. The bureau's end apparently means the departure of Davey Joe Montgomery, who has covered politics from the nation's capital to the Texas Legislature. Farewell to another fabled journalist.

Why did I learn about this from The New York Times? Earlier last week, the Star-Telegram informed subscribers it was eliminating several syndicated advice columns and squeezing the comics onto fewer pages. Belatedly, Executive Editor Jim Witt, in a Sunday column, glossed over the bureau closing.
I also learned, from an associate at a nonprofit that Melinda Mason's duties were being eliminated. Mason writes the Fort Worth Social Eyes column and during more than three decades at the newspaper helped the Star-Telegram team with community groups on events. Is the newspaper dropping this function as well?

How about full disclosure to better prepare readers as the daily newspaper we faithfully subscribe to continues its gradual and inevitable decline into the digital age?

-- Hollace Ava Weiner, Fort Worth

Typical

Both the TIF and the reporting.

Read the article about TIF's not living up to their hype or promises.  The article that then goes on to tell you how much the TIF's should make.  Wait, what??  Typical Fort Worth Way in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

It talks about the developers taking risks with TIF's, it doesn't say much about those that fund the TIF.  Yes, it's YOU.

Notice how when they tell you about the Trinity River Vision TIF, they leave out the 40 years it spans (so far).

Does that mean YOUR kids will be sheep too?

Many projections for valuation growth were wildly overoptimistic.

For example, the tax increment finance district, or TIF, that covers east Fort Worth's Woodhaven neighborhood has lost overall property value for two years in a row. And a TIF that was started to attract a Cabela's sporting goods store to far north Fort Worth doesn't generate enough revenue to reimburse the retailer for bond payments tied to the development.

They typically stay in place for 20 years.

But he added, "Nobody predicted the loss of tax base two years in a row," referring to Woodhaven.

Cabela's was touted as a destination that would attract other development and millions of visitors. But there has been no other building.

The TIF, which was challenged in court by a citizens group, was set up to attract the Cabela's project at the northeast corner of I-35W and Texas 170. Cabela's said it wouldn't come to Fort Worth without it.

One of the more ambitious TIFs in terms of funding development is the Trinity River Vision TIF, which spans 3,980 acres from Northeast 23rd Street on the north and West Lancaster Avenue to the south, and includes Gateway Park to the east. The TIF proposes $320 million in spending.

The TIF currently carries costs associated with the Trinity River Vision project and has raised $8.4 million but spent only $2.5 million, the report says.

It started in 2003 with a base property value of $130.7 million.

That grew to $334.8 million in 2010, but expectations are that it could have a taxable value of $2.6 billion by 2044.

Give it up

Instead of saying, “we can’t add”, the Star-Telegram chooses to call the call out on them “grumbling”. 

And don't miss the comments on Durango's boondoggle post.  They keep getting better.

Drive-in grumbling

A "back to the future" drive-in movie theater promises to reap a profit of $1.7 million over a 10-year contract with the Tarrant Regional Water District. The enlightened Star-Telegram Editorial Board says this "sounds like a way to jump-start activity along the Trinity River -- and at no risk to the taxpayer."

A 1.8 percent return on $909 million may sound like a good deal to the dim bulbs at the water district, Trinity River Vision Authority and Star-Telegram, but it sounds to me like yet another departure from a flawed Trinity Uptown plan that includes a flooded wakeboard park (what is the profit from that?), and a no-bid, one-time good-deal restaurant lease. And at no risk to the taxpayer, you say?

A couple hundred million to remediate flood potential caused by a half-billion-dollar rechanneling of the river, all to return far less than it costs. That's visionary?

-- Clyde Picht, Fort Worth

Fort Worth Drive-In

Has everybody talking. 

Durango does it again.  YOU don't want to miss it, or the comments.

Yes. That sounds like a good plan, lease land to a startup business starting up a new business they've not started up before. Sounds like a recipe for success. Sort of like building the world's premiere wakeboard park where it can get wiped out by a flood.

The TRV Boondoggle Drive-In propaganda promoters are saying they anticipate around 300,000 TRVBDIT (Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Drive-In Theater) movie goers a year.

That works out to about 822 paying customers a day.

That sounds believable. Sort of like how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and its propaganda co-horts claimed 7 to 8 million visitors a year to the Fort Worth Cabela's sporting goods store would make Cabela's the top tourist attraction in Texas. With apparently no one doing the math to see how unlikely was a daily average of around 22,000 visitors to a sporting goods store.

Three screens with up to 500 cars each? That'd be 1,500 cars running their A/Cs to keep cool on a HOT Texas summer night. That does not sound very eco-friendly to me.

To Preserve Our Rights, We Must Stand Up For Them

by Josh Fox on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 

This morning, the charge of "unlawful entry" brought against me was dismissed without condition.   The US Attorney dropped the case, finding it baseless and without merit.  Although this is a personal victory and I am very grateful and relieved at the US Attorney's decision, it serves as a painful reminder that we do not have rights unless we exercise them .

On February 1st, I was arrested, briefly jailed, and charged with "unlawful entry" for attempting to film a public hearing in the Science, Space and Technology committee.  I did not enter unlawfully, I lined up outside just as everyone else did and walked in when the room opened.  I set up my tripod and camera where cameras normally are set up in that particular hearing room and I was calm and peaceful.  I did not disrupt the hearing nor did I intend to do so.   I believed I was within my first amendment rights, as a journalist and filmmaker.  I was reporting on a case that is intensely personal to me, that I have been following for 3 years. 

The House had convened a hearing in the House Energy and Environment subcommittee to challenge EPAs findings that hydraulic fracturing fluids had contaminated groundwater in the town of Pavillion, Wyoming. I have a long history with the town of Pavillion and its residents who have maintained since 2008 that fracking has contaminated their water supply. I featured the stories of residents John Fenton, Louis Meeks and Jeff Locker in GASLAND and I have continued to document the catastrophic water contamination in Pavillion for the upcoming sequel GASLAND 2. It was clear that Republican leadership, including Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland, who ordered my arrest, was using this hearing to attack the three year Region 8 EPA investigation involving hundreds of samples and extensive water testing which ruled that Pavillion’s groundwater was a health hazard, contaminated by benzene at 50x the safe level and numerous other contaminants associated with gas drilling. Most importantly, EPA stated in this case that fracking was the likely cause.

When I was being led out of Congress in handcuffs, Representative Paul Tonko, Democracy of New York shouted out "This is the People's House!" in disgust.  Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina, moved to suspend the rules so that we could continue to film the proceedings stating "All god's children should be allowed to film this hearing!"  It was a surreal moment.   Later that day, Congressman Maurice Hinchey would write, "This is blatant censorship and a shameful stain on this Congress."

 But if it is not now the "People's House", it is now, more than ever the "people's media".  I was able to watch my own arrest on youtube because members of the audience filmed it and posted their videos.  It was the citizen journalism that first documented people lighting their water on fire in gas fracking areas.  It was citizen journalism that posted videos of the recent mass arrest of peaceful protestors in New York and in California.  The people's media is our system of accountability and transparency and we must continue to practice it.

 The First Amendment to the Constitution states explicitly “Congress shall make no law…that infringes on the Freedom of the Press”. Which means that no subcommittee rule or regulation should prohibit a respectful journalist or citizen from recording a public hearing.

I have huge respect for those who make the immense personal sacrifice to do public service and represent their constituents and the American people.  I believe we elect our representatives with good will and trust and the hopes that they serve us honestly and respectfully and I believe that we, as citizens, send them to Congress with love, pride and well wishes for the future of the nation.  However, I have no respect for or deference to those who would misuse the power granted them by the American people to upend the institutions of democratic government and the rights of the citizenship they have ben sworn to uphold for private gain, political leverage or because they are beholden to corporate influence or corrosive ideology.

The people of Pavillion deserve better. The thousands across the US who have documented cases of water contamination in fracking areas deserve their own hearing on Capitol Hill. They deserve the chance to testify before Congress. The truth that fracking contaminates groundwater is out, and no amount of intimidation tactics –either outright challenges to science or the arrest of journalists –will put the genie back in the bottle. Such a brazen attempt to discredit and silence the EPA, the citizens of Pavillion and documentary filmmaking will ultimately fail and it is an affront to the health and integrity of Americans.

We cannot take our democracy and the rights of our citizenship for granted.  Democracy is not handed to us from on high or guaranteed to us by battles fought by our ancestors.  It is perpetually under siege by those with power, money and influence who would rather our nation of laws becomes a nation of affiliation.  It is clear to me that I was arrested to serve the interests of oil and gas companies, whose interests often run counter to those of ordinary American citizens.

I was arrested because I refused to turn off my camera at a public hearing in the US congress.  I have filmed hundreds of public hearings around the country and the first amendment guarantees my ability to report on what happens in public. 

And I continue to refuse.  I refuse to let Congressmen blatantly attack science in the the Science committee without the light of the media shining out their transgressions.  I refuse to be silenced and not report on the misdeeds of those representatives who are clearly influenced by oil and gas companies beyond loyalty to their own citizen's health.  I refuse to stand down and let oil and gas companies lie about what they are injecting into the ground and emitting into the air.  I refuse to let the bill of rights collapse under the weight of a 250 million dollar lobbying campaign.  I refuse to let money, power and influence define the next American century over the will of the people.  I refuse to turn of my camera and sit idly by as huge areas in 34 states become sacrificial drilling zones.  I refuse to turn my back on the good and great people that have entrusted me with their stories of oil and gas contamination and walk away from the fight they have inspired me to wage on their behalf.  I refuse to let the oil and gas industry bury their cancerous secrets for us to unwittingly drink.  I refuse to bow and walk out of congress leaving it to the influence of those with money to peddle in its halls.  I refuse to relinquish my understanding of the law and of justice. I refuse to surrender my citizenship and my dignity, head bowed in submission, to the influence of corporate power. I refuse to forsake the American dream of the many for the financial gain of the nationless few.  I refuse to walk away, from my home and my country.

The fact that my case was dismissed so readily only attests to the ridiculousness and unfairness of my arrest, the US attorney has refused to pursue it.

I woke up one morning and declared myself a journalist.  I had to.  My home was under siege by the gas fracking industry.  I felt that I had to not only seek out the true effects of the largest natural gas drilling campaign in history on public health and the environment but also to report what I found to my community. 

The first amendment states that anyone can do the same.  Anyone can wake up in the morning, declare themselves a journalist and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.   In the era of instant media, youtube and social networks, this becomes even more relevant and exciting; anyone with an iphone can rock the world.  It was citizen journalists who first posted police pepper spraying peaceful protestors in New York and California and it was citizen distribution that virally spread those horrific videos of police brutality until the whole world was infected with the truth of what is happening in the USA today.  It was citizen journalists who first documented water catching on fire at the kitchen sink as a result of gas fracking.  It was citizen journalists who woke up one morning and decided to show the water contamination and air pollution due to gas drilling in Texas, Wyoming, Pennsylvania and in states across the nation.

This year we have seen severe repression of journalism in America.  Hundreds of journalists have been arrested this year simply trying to do their jobs.  Whether they were covering oil and gas issues or issues of economic inequality during the Occupy demonstrations. 

"Recently, Reporters Without Borders released its 2011–2012 global Press Freedom Index.  Due to journalist arrests and press suppression at Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests, the United States has dropped significantly in the rankings of press freedom, from 27 to 47." Truthout reports.

Having personally witnessed the outrageous police brutality and repression which was an unwarranted response to occupy protests and to citizens who were acting in defense of their towns and neighborhoods against gas fracking and other egregious human rights violations as the result of fossil fuel development, I feel it is necessary to stand with all of those who have had enough of inequality and enough of big business having undue influence over the government.

So please accept my invitation, and the First Amendment's authorization, to declare yourself a member of the Press.  Declare yourself a witness to history and a fighter for transparency and equality under the law.  And if you feel like it, go film a congressional hearing.  Don't bother to ask for permission, permission was just granted to you by the US Attorney.  You don't need credentials, you have your rights.  Assert them.

Josh Fox
2/12/15

p.s. I am very thankful to Reporters Without Borders, The Society of Environmental Journalists and the Independent Documentary Association and to the 30,000 people who signed the Working Families Party petition on my behalf and to all of my supporters for your help well wishes and statements of outrage and strength.  I am also very grateful to all of the reporters, news outlets and journalists who reported on this travesty.

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.

WHAT?!

It doesn't matter which side of the aisle you sit on or which side of this particular fight you are on -   If this doesn't outrage you, you might be more like "them" then you think. 

From the Huffington Post:

In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing.

"It's an outrageous violation of the First Amendment," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told HuffPost. "Here we've got an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, and it's an important subject and the subject that he did his prior film on for HBO. And they put him in handcuffs and hauled him out of there. This is stunning."

"I found it ironic that there was not a flood of cameras there," noted Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). "There was the one camera and then before that, the ABC camera ... if you have a camera there to bring the issue home to the public, that's a good thing."

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost, “I have served in the House of Representatives since 1992, and I had the privilege of chairing the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. In all that time, I cannot recall a chair of any committee or subcommittee having ever ordered the removal of a person who was filming a committee proceeding and not being disruptive, whether or not that person was accredited. It is a matter of routine that all sorts of people photograph and record our proceedings. Most of them are not accredited. I cannot recall anyone questioning their right to be there."

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU in Washington, explained that "congressional committees routinely allow professional journalists to record hearings even when they don't have official press credentials, and excluding a journalist because he doesn't share the political views of the committee chair is outrageous. The Supreme Court has explained many times that censorship based on viewpoint is the clearest kind of First Amendment violation, and that seems to be what happened here."

Read the developing story and Josh Fox's response on the Huffington Post.  What was the charge?  Unlawful Entry.  To a public meeting??  How's that? 

Dallas Fort Worth Media

Please stop reporting on kids being transported at the Stock Show in strollers (duh) and if the Cowboys are still America's team.  Please report on things that affect those you should be serving and things that are going on right under your noses. 

WHAT will the local "news" say when some big city slicker news outfit rolls into town and starts asking WHY no one has reported on these issues?  We can't wait to hear. 

Neither can Durango.

I still have not seen any mention made in the Star-Telegram of the fact that the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's flood control project's first completed project, the Cowtown Wakepark, was severely damaged in the first flood of the Trinity River since its completion.

Of course it's not just our local media making a mockery out of themselves, national media was just put in its place by none other than Miss Piggy.  Here's hoping she also comes to see us in Cowtown soon. 

Anyway, during a news conference last week for the U.K. premiere of "The Muppets," Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy were asked about a December segment on Eric Bolling's "Follow the Money" that posed the question, "Are Liberals Trying to Brainwash Your Kids Against Capitalism?" One guest on the segment blasted the Muppets movie, which makes an oil executive (played by Chris Cooper) its villain.

Piggy said of the segment: "It's almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as, you know, being news."

Fort Worth Vision

Or lack thereof. 

Which do you think would make the "news" in Fort Worth?

Durango watched a mother struggle with a stroller and no sidewalks and reported on it, and then tells you about the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporting on people pushing strollers at the Stock Show. 

THAT is news? Really?

Fort Worth does not have what most city's in America have, that being a major newspaper of record that acts as the community's watchdog.

What Fort Worth has is this pseudo newspaper that calls itself the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but should more accurately be called the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Pravda-Like Star-Telegram.

How can a city be so blind that it can have a vision wasting millions of dollars to build a river diversion channel that is not needed, a little lake that will cause giggles, non-signature bridges to nowhere and whatever else it is that is currently being seen by the myopic Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, when its city sidewalks, or lack of, are something one might expect to see in a town in a Third World country?

Where is the vision for the rest of Fort Worth? The part not seen by the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle?

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.

"People deserve to know that kind of stuff."

Almost three years ago, we started this blog due to the lack of news we were seeing on the "news".

(There are several stories taking place in Tarrant County right now, that none of the "news" stations have reported on. WHY?)

So due to lack of "news" we decided to do something, so did Grant Stinchfield.  Here's an article on WHY Grant left "news" reporting to run for office. 

There are still reporters left in the county.  They just don't work for the "news".

Kudos, Grant! 

Here is an excerpt of what Stinchfield had to say regarding a tip he started investigating  about government spending:   “When Cowboys Stadium  was being built….General Motors, getting bailed out by the federal government,  wants to buy a suite at Cowboys stadium….a million $ plus for that suite.  I make a call, and as a good conversative I say GM shouldn’t be buying a suite with taxpayer dollars.   20 minutes later I get hauled into the general manager’s office telling me, you will not make another call on that story. ” Stinchfield says the general manager didn’t want to “rock the boat” with automotive advertisers, even though it meant not reporting on what Stinchfield felt was the inappropriate spending of taxpayer dollars.

People in 2011

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram put out it's 2011 DFW Newsmakers.

We'd like to salute the citizens that ended up on the list.  THE PEOPLE who ended up there by standing up for what they believe in and protecting their neighbors.  A firefighter, a veteran, an urban gas drilling opponent and a man teaching our youth a better way of life.  These real people make a difference in our world.  Kudos to them all.  As for the rest of the list...we applaud Wendy Davis for again, standing up for THE PEOPLE.  Too bad there aren't more like her.

The meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service, Bill Bunting, also made the list.  His "standard line" on North Texas weather - 

"Episodes of drought punctuated by periods of catastrophic flooding."

Wonder WHO and what 2012 will bring...

WHY is that?

The last sentence in on an ABCNEWS.com article caught our attention.


Perry is the only candidate, other than President Obama, whose security is funded by taxpayers.

Rick Perry’s security costs have risen since he entered the presidential campaign in August, costing Texas taxpayers as much as $400,000 a month, according to a report by the Texas Tribune.

So our Senator spends more on travel than any others and our Governor is the only other man in America that we're paying for his security...

WHY is that?

ASK.

WTH is going on in Trophy Club?!

Good thing for the citizens that THE PEOPLE are following the trail.  Too bad the "news" isn't.  As with most things in Tarrant County, it leads back to water and money.

Here's the latest incoming from Trophy Club concerning their water, MUD, SLAPP, corruption and lack of "news" coverage.

We know we've asked this before, but is there a reporter in the county?  Anyone?  Hello...

Trophy Club's Wastewater Woes Worsen

Trophy Club Municipal Utility District(MUD) officials showed little Christmas cheer on Tuesday December 20th as they reviewed  the findings of a local wastewater treatment consultant hired to review MUD 1 operations after repeated violations of the plant's permitted limits for Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD).  The MUD District Manager and newly hired wastewater treatment superintendent briefed the 5 directors on the report and detailed the problems that contributed to the previous superintendent's resignation just last month.

The report addressing chronic violations of BOD limits was a 180 degree deviation from the previous administration's handling of the matter.  As late as 2010, MUD director Jim Budarf had claimed in writing that the wastewater treatment plant had, “...never been in noncompliance.”

According to the report, the MUD wastewater treatment equipment was designed to meet a BOD permit limit of 10 parts per million (ppm) by  the engineering firm CDM when it was installed.  The current MUD permit limit however is 5 ppm(one half the equipment's capability).

The MUD was required to install approximately 3 million dollars in equipment in 2003 as a part of an agreed enforcement order by the Environmental Protection Agency.  The enforcement order came after multiple permit limit violations of BOD and other pollutants.

Details about the wastewater treatment equipment had been requested repeatedly by the group Citizens for MUD Accountability.  Ironically, MUD attorney Pam Liston, who had stated that there were no records responsive to those requests in 2009, presided over    Tuesday's discussion.

Kevin Carr, who was the subject of a formal ethics complaint by Citizens for MUD Accountability in 2009 over the environmental violations, was also present.  Mr. Carr, who had  been quoted in 2009 as saying that he was “insulted” by the ethics complaint, stated for the record that the report was not related to drinking water.  He did not clarify why he thought the discharge into Grapevine Lake (a source of drinking water for millions) had no impact on drinking water.

The Title of this article pays homage to the editorial travesty published by the Star-Telegram Times Register on Nov. 18, 2009 titled “Water Woes Wrapped Up” .  According to that article,“Trophy Club resolved its wastewater violations months ago and no longer has issues needing correction...”

Unfortunately for the Trophy Club MUD, the Star Telegram holds little sway with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who issued the permit this year with the 5 ppm limit.  According to Trophy Club's most recent notice from that agency penalties can be subject to fines of $32,500 per violation per day with the possibility of imprisonment for knowing violations.

THE People want more

Many were looking forward to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram becoming YOUR paper. 

Some still are.

Read the following Letter to the Editor.

More letters, please

Has anyone besides me noticed that, since the Star-Telegram implemented its latest reformatting of the paper, the letters section has been dramatically reduced in size? Editorials and guest columnists seem to get more space than all the letters combined. Several times since the reformatting, I have totally missed the letters section when going through the paper and had to thumb back through to find it.

This seems a shame for what I once looked forward to as a good cross-section of views and commentary from readers.

We need more space for letters from readers and less space devoted to editorials and guest columnists, in my opinion.

-- Michael A. Jones, Fort Worth

WHO's news??

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently claimed they were YOUR paper.

Funny, we received an email from an active Fort Worth citizen that tells a much different story.  What happens when the officials and industry are your only customers?

The Fort Worth Startlegram has blocked me from making online comments on their stories because of my prolific responses to stories about bad air quality and the negative impacts of gas drilling on ground water sources. Also, I would imagine their censorship is because I will not back down from the real jerks who post on the ST site! Sad...truly sad that if it were not for the Associated Press and the New York Times, the ST would not even report on any of this crap we are having to deal with because of corrupt elected officials and an industry that cares not for any of us. I guess advertising dollars are more important to the ST than we are!

New "News"

From Arlington.  THEY get it.

Good luck to the Arlington Voice! Coming soon, to everywhere near YOU!

Here's hoping Fort Worth gets a Voice, too.

Catching on

The Fort Worth Weekly makes note of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram recent changes. Is it new?  Or old?  Are they targeting the young? Or old?  We can't tell anymore.

Though we like the fact the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is going to expand Cheers and Jeers over many days, since it's the "most popular feature".  That says a lot.  And as we've always said, if you want to know what's going on in Fort Worth, you go to THE PEOPLE, not the paper.  Now, let's hope they quit arguing with the Cheers and Jeers writers and print the darn things.

Editorial Director J.R. Labbe chimed in with her own column, saying the editorial section would run “Cheers & Jeers” four days a week instead of one. After all, it’s one of the paper’s “most popular features.” 

(Actually, the “Jeers” are a popular feature. Static’s never met anybody who reads the “Cheers.”)

So: The paper is changing by running more cheers, jeers, and columns written by you, the “readers.” Actually, that makes sense. A newspaper that’s bought out, laid off, fired, or otherwise gotten rid of much of its staff would do well to rely more on guest writers to fill space. Witt nailed it when he ended his column by saying, “This is your newspaper!”