Speaking of parks...

You mention Haltom City around here and let the emails begin.  Comments and more. 

In the post concerning "White's Branch Park" (named after White's Branch creek) the cost was listed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as $1.25 million.  Though the picture we were sent shows a different amount. 

Something doesn't add up.  WHAT is it?

Ask.

And if you missed the post on things not adding up in Tarrant County, read it.

Speaking of creeks...

And Haltom City...

A Letter to the Editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asks a good question about a recent article on parks in Tarrant County.

High-water mark

The Monday front page shows builders working on a "low-water crossing" along Whites Creek in "Haltom City's new park." (See: "Splendor in our backyard is increasingly accessible")

Please help me understand why they would not build a high-water crossing. It seems like that is the more dangerous condition. Just how low is the crossing going to be? And how will they close the crossing when the water gets high?

-- Howard M. Cornell III, Arlington

That's a good question, sir.  Especially since just yards away from the park, is where the child drowned in one of the Haltom City floods.  We didn't see any mention of that in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram park article. 

We did see every city around has their hand out for park grants.  Why do we have a feeling the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) is involved in them all?  The paper didn't mention that either.

The 20-acre site, whose working name is Whites Branch Park, will have a 20-by-30-foot picnic pavilion and separate playground structures for children 5 and younger and for 5- to 12-year-olds, all surrounded by a hike/bike trail system. Perhaps most important, given the North Texas climate, the park will feature the city's biggest splash pad.

The $1.25 million park project will be partly funded by $700,000 in grants from Texas Parks and Wildlife, Henry said. The city is making up the difference.

The city also plans to join the new park to Buffalo Ridge Park by acquiring 120 flood-prone properties. When the project is completed, park visitors will have access to the Buffalo Ridge hike-and-bike trail, eventually linking to a 15-mile trail system through Watauga and Fort Worth.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/15/3885821/tarrant-county-cities-are-adding.html#storylink=cpy

Danger Zone!

The mess of 820 from I35 to 183 is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Drive I35, east on 820. If you're feeling really brave, enter 35 at Meacham.  Travel the narrow, winding lane, with no shoulder, and bad striping, next to concrete barriers you could reach out and touch.  Pay attention to all the signs, there's a ton of them telling you the exits are closed, or lanes are, or more are about to be. 

When there is a wreck, how do you think the emergency responders get to you?  Yeah, it ain't easy.  Where do all those people in the two lane holding cell behind you go?  Nowhere.

Which is exactly what happened today in Haltom City.  Luckily there were no fatalities when a truck went off a bridge into the creek bed below.  Traffic was shut down all day.  People were stuck for hours.  (pictures at FWST)

They're going to be stuck for years.  

Guess it's a good thing it wasn't raining.  We've seen what happens to that creek when it rains.  Sometimes, it too, shuts down the freeway.

One month before the Fort Worth tornado -

In 2000, Councilman Clyde Picht wrote a letter to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  At the time he was the only one in town advocating for emergency sirens.  The mayor, city council and Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board all were against spending money on sirens that protect people.

What was he basing his position on?  History. It tends to repeat itself. 

A month after Clyde wrote the letter, the tornado hit.  Lives were lost, just like he said. 

Currently, this mayor, council and paper disagree with what Clyde says about the Trinity River Vision.  What's the next Editorial Board going to say? 

Clyde's comment after rereading the commentary he wrote in 2000 - 

It’s too bad we had to wait for the disaster we knew was coming before we made a decision to upgrade our warning system.

Sounds familiar.  The following will too, read about Fort Worth, twelve years ago, before the tornado.

Two million for warning sirens?  A bargain at twice the price!
 
            When German bombers attacked London during the Second World War they lacked the precision guidance of today's weapons. On the other hand, the British radar showed only the general direction the bombers traveled so throughout the city air raid sirens wailed to warn the people of impending attack.

                Now, sixty years later, the National Weather Service has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in high tech equipment that can tell with a degree of precision the path a tornado will follow. The detection of severe weather is in the 21st century but the Fort Worth warning sirens are more suitable for the Battle of Britain. Our sirens will blare throughout our 250 square mile city, if they blare at all. Because of their age replacement parts are not readily available. Ten to fifteen percent of the system fails when tested, and on occasion, the whole system has been known to fail. With the rapid growth of our city some areas on the developing fringe are totally without warning sirens.

                Some things are fact. We live at the Southwest end of what weather experts call "Tornado Ally." Tornadoes have caused massive destruction and loss of life to the West, South, and East of Fort Worth. Severe weather caused major destruction in Fort Worth, pelting us with hail the size of baseballs in 1980 and 1995. Weather experts say that we will be struck by a killer tornado similar to the one that raised havoc in Moore, Oklahoma, last year. It's not a matter of whether, but when.

                In a recent commentary (2/21/00), Star-Telegram writer Jack Z. Smith reported that as a consequence of the Moore disaster that city is going to double the number of sirens. In my own conversation with Emergency Management Director, Gayland Kitch, he told me that even though the tornado occurred during rush hour, with plenty of radio and TV coverage, some residents didn't take cover until they heard the warning sirens. Smith reports Kitch said he feels that sirens help save lives and that Fort Worth would be wise to invest in them.

                Some things are fiction. According to Smith, the Mayor and some Council members feel that warnings sirens are not worth the $2-$3 million cost. They think radio, television, Internet, cell phones, E-mail and weather radios will substitute for sirens. It is not uncommon to have power outages during severe weather. With the power outages go your radio, television, Internet, and E-mail. Few computer owners are foolish enough to operate them during thunderstorms without UPS. A battery-powered radio will still work, provided the batteries are good and you have it with you. Cell phones might work if you've got them, but they don't always perform well even in good weather. First-hand reports from Oklahoma demonstrate that cell phones fail when tornadoes are near. Weather radios, like cell phones, are fine if everybody has one. Not everyone can afford or will want to buy a weather radio for $40-$80 (cost according to Smith). Most people probably wouldn't have one nearby during severe weather, in any case. Twenty-two people lost their lives when tornadoes hit Georgia in mid February. They came at night when folks were tucked safely in their beds. Or so they thought. Computers, cell phones, radios - all off. 

                A state of the art warning system has advantages that all the aforementioned devices don't have. The per capita cost is very nominal. A system will last many years and perform with high reliability. It can be used to warn residents in the path of severe weather without alarming those in safer areas. It can be localized to warn of hazardous spills on freeways and rail lines. It has a voice capability to describe circumstances that may require residents to take cover or remain in their homes and can warn children playing outside. With correct placement they are likely to be heard inside the home as well as outside.

                Lives will be lost in the event of a major tornado transiting Tarrant County. Adequate warning will save many lives, which might otherwise be lost. Ironically, the City Council was presented a proposal by the Fire Chief for the 1998 Capital Improvement Program that would have replaced the current warning system. The council turned it down and chose to use some of that money for park improvement. Pity the poor folks in the park who might be whisked away to Oz because they don't own a cell phone or weather radio, and live in a city where they are expected to take more "personal responsibility" for their safety.

                Like the unfortunate homeowner who installs a burglar alarm after the family heirlooms have been stolen, the City of Fort Worth will some day upgrade its woefully deficient disaster warning system after a major storm wreaks death and destruction. It willstill be cheap at twice the monetary price but what's the value of a life?

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.

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.

When it rains, Haltom City floods

The article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram says "Fossil Creek" six times.  It never specifies WHICH Fossil Creek, but you get the hint.

About 6:30 a.m., Haltom City shut down one side of the crossing over Fossil Creek, where Fred Napp, deputy fire chief and fire marshal, said high-water problems are common.

Even before they were finished there, the rescuers were called to another Fossil Creek crossing, Napp said.

“While we were there, we were dispatched to a second incident on Minnis Drive just south of Airport Freeway,” he said. “It was where Fossil Creek got out of its banks again. There were three vehicles involved.”

Napp said that Fossil Creek looked more like a river Wednesday morning.

“The channel got to between 40 and 50 feet deep where they’ve done some flood-control work,” he said. “It was all the way up to the rim of the channel and above where we were.”

Glenview Drive over Fossil Creek is the No. 1 spot for flooding in Haltom City, Napp said.

Lots of stuff under water in Haltom City, including gas drilling equipment in the park next to the 820 construction.

Seems like it has flooded there before......

Coming soon to a sewer near YOU

If you didn't see the History Channel show, America's Crumbling Infrastructure, you should.

You should also read the article on Yahoo.com, US Cities struggle to control sewer overflows.  

And remember it next time appointed and elected officials want you to Tube the Trinity River.  Thousands of these overflows happen yearly.  When you neglect the infrastructure that is at least a century old and was built for the population of that time, WHAT did you think would happen?

At least some of the rubbish had drifted across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee, a vivid reminder that many cities still flush nasty stuff into streams and lakes during heavy storms, fouling the waters with bacteria and viruses that can make people seriously ill.

Costs are reaching hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

She was shocked to learn that federal law lets cities discharge untreated sewage when their plants and storage facilities are flooded.

"It was maddening that they had permission to do this and we had to live with the consequences," Rodwell said.

The ultimate goal is zero overflows, but officials don't expect to get there until about 2035 because it will require being able to handle the kind of flooding that previously happened rarely but is becoming more common.

One partial solution gaining popularity with cities is "green infrastructure" — natural and man-made features that enable more water to soak into the ground instead of washing into storm drains and creeks. Stoner and Giles of EPA instructed field staff last year to incorporate green features into storm water and sewer permits as much as possible.

"Cities have had decades to deal with this problem," Welch said. "We need firm deadlines and we need strong enforcement so it can finally be solved."

Latest Arlington Flood

But the game is still the same.  Everyone involved pointing fingers and blame at each other.  And the homeowners left holding the bag.

It's nice of Arlington to offer them a place to stay for at least a week.  What happens when "the City" floods YOU?

Read about it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Two homes on Hillside Drive and a home on Woodside Drive were damaged Oct. 26 when a 12-inch waterline at the Pierce Burch Water Treatment Plant ruptured during a $400,000 waterline renewal project.

The city is still investigating the cause of the break, but officials have said Ark Contracting Services would cover property damage claims. But this week, Travelers Insurance notified affected homeowners that it does not believe that Ark Contracting is responsible for their damage.

"Travelers' review of the contract between Ark and the City reveals the contract does not obligate Ark to be responsible for damages occurring outside the scope of the contracted work," the letter to residents stated. "Further, we do not believe Ark was negligent in their actions giving rise to the flooding. Therefore, we will be unable to assist you with your renovations and suggest you look to the City."

The news of the insurance denial came as a surprise to resident Carol Cash, who said city officials have referred her complaints to Travelers for three weeks.

Cash, who has asthma, said the city denied her request for temporary housing Nov. 11 after a doctor recommended that she move out of the home until the mold is removed.

Cash said that she isn't thrilled about spending the Thanksgiving holiday at a hotel but that her home has become unlivable.

The water treatment plant has nearly flooded Cash's home twice before, she said. She wants the city to buy her home, which she feels has been drastically devalued.

"I don't want to be their neighbor anymore," Cash said. "It's not fair to us homeowners. We didn't ask for this. They destroyed our property."

YOU Do Not Want To Miss This

Dear Friends of the Trinity River,

Please join us for an unprecedented event that promises to be an enlightening and educational evening. Bring your questions. And bring your neighborhood associations, groups and clubs - all taxpayers need to hear this.

Sincerely,

Your friends at TRIP

Trinity River Talk

Have questions about TRV?  Want to hear both sides?

Join us.

October 12th @ 6:30 p.m.
Botanic Garden, Fort Worth  - Lecture Hall

Panelists include:

Jim Lane - Tarrant Regional Water District Board member and former Fort Worth City Council member

J.D. Granger - Trinity River Vision Authority Executive Director and former Assistant District Attorney

Mark Rauscher - City of Fort Worth - Trinity River Vision Director

Clyde Picht - Former Fort Worth City Council member

Steve Hollern - CPA and former Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman

John Basham - Consulting Meteorologist

TRIP would like to thank the SPJFW for moderating this important community event for the citizens.

3,000 Dams...

"Fracking near dams could cause catastrophic event per US Army Corps Engineers".  Duh. 

Read about it on TexasSharon.com.

WHO's to blame?

The same folks that want to move and remove the levees in Fort Worth???

Pay attention, it could keep YOU from being a victim.

Read what THE PEOPLE say in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram letters.

Who's to blame?


Ahh baseball. The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the incorrect information in this article. (See: "Wash to assist New Orleans youth," Wednesday) Yes, that's right, Drew Davison, in writing about a no doubt heart-warming event for Ron Washington, failed to grasp what happened in Washington's hometown in 2005. Davison said that the "devastation" was "left by Hurricane Katrina."

Hurricane Katrina did not devastate New Orleans. Point the finger of blame in the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers, the entity responsible for the devastation that wracked the Big Easy that summer six years ago.

-- Jamie Radley, San Leandro, Calif.

We cannot thank Ron Washington enough for the stadium, but it was the Army Corps of Engineers that devastated NOLA by building inferior levees and concrete walls. Please do not mislead your readers; one day they may also be victims.

-- Cathy Cole Hightower, Metairie, La.

Mary's Creek

The Fort Worth Business Press gives you the heads up about the Fort Worth Water Department meeting concerning Mary's Creek. 

From the article it doesn't sound like much has changed, no matter how much the residents protest.  YOU should pay attention.  YOU could be next.

And speaking of water and sewage...check out Durango's question for the day. 

The Fort Worth Water Department will host an open house on July 21 to discuss plans to purchase a site for the future Mary’s Creek Water Reclamation Facility. The open house will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. at Western Hills Baptist Church at 8500 Chapin Road.

The event will feature no special presentation, but citizens with questions about the project can ask water department officials about the plans.

Work on the Mary’s Creek Water Reclamation Facility began in 2009 with a Site Selection Study that included a Community Advisory Committee. The committee recommended criteria for selecting the site.

Condos in Limbo

The Montgomery Wards condos are still in legal limbo, more importantly they are still sitting empty.

They say "Build it and they will come".  WHO says?  WHO is coming?  WHERE are they?

The Trinity River Vision should take a lesson from the Montgomery Wards condo fiasco.  Not more of the how do you switch money around and take people's stuff for less lesson, a don't put your cart before the horse lesson.

Read about it in the Fort Worth Business Press.  Notice the Fort Worth Way at play.  Also, notice the word Vision and tax abatement...and there's that name again, the North Central Texas Council of Governments.  Yeah, they are everywhere.  WHO are they again?  WHAT is their purpose?

Be sure and read the article, YOU can't afford not to.

That group is owed millions by some of the project’s developers.
In all, the contractors were left holding the bag for about $6.5 million, he said.

A grand vision

Despite protests from historic preservationists, and with the help of a city tax abatement, the eight-story behemoth was gutted and a six-story hole carved out of the facade’s center, opening up a brick-paved plaza with space for outdoor dining, parking and shoppers. Stores and restaurants opened at street level and pricy condos were laid out on the upper floors.

“An example of preservation in the context of urban redevelopment,” the North Central Texas Council of Governments gushed when it awarded developers of the 46.19-acre Montgomery Plaza, Weber & Co., one of its 2007 Celebrating Leadership in Development Excellence Awards.
   
“The bottom line is the majority of the money owed is from a insurance incident: Pipe busts, floods multiple floors, insurance company pays, owner takes the money, doesn’t pay the bills, allows bank to foreclose on property voiding all liens, then buys the property back under a different name, lien free,” owner Kip Wadleigh wrote in a message posted on the website of Hardwood Floors Magazine.
 
“That company declared bankruptcy and bought it back,” “Bought a $50 million property for $18 million and did away with all the liens all the subcontractors had taken out. Hard to believe that’s legal in the state of Texas, but I’m told it is.”

River of Denial

Guess there is a reporter in the county, and his name is Dan McGraw.

Don't miss the Fort Worth Weekly article, Unleashing a Flood of Questions.  You know how we love questions. 

This isn't a PR piece brought to you courtesy of the Trinity River Vision or the Tarrant Regional Water District or the Congresswoman's office.  YOU can't afford to miss it.  After all, it's YOUR $909 million.  Every penny of it.

Projected costs for the project have ballooned to about $909 million. The economy is still in the Great Recession, and federal, state, and local governments are all facing severe budget shortfalls that will leave their mark for years to come. Congress has put a temporary ban on earmark bills, the strategy by which local project funding was routinely added to unrelated bills and that U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth used to get about $60 million for the TRV in the past. And the Corps, faced with continuing fallout from the Hurricane Katrina debacles in Louisiana and this year’s massive flooding along the Mississippi, is dealing with many projects much more critical than improvements in Fort Worth to a river section that hasn’t seen significant flooding in half a century.

The Trinity River Vision Authority is the governmental agency created specifically to oversee this massive project, but the officials on its governing board are appointed, not elected by the public.

WHO was appointed to head it?  Oh, that's right, JD Granger, son of the Congresswoman.

The federal funding component of the TRV is now $487 million of the $909 million. That includes the Corps’ flood control work, along with contributions from federal transportation, economic development, housing, and environmental protection agencies.

In the convoluted world of Washington, as in Fort Worth, it is hard to get clear answers on where the Trinity River Vision stands. The Corps has ruled that the project is “technically sound and environmentally acceptable,” but the funding must be approved on a year-by-year basis. In the past five years, about $29 million has been appropriated for it. But that is nowhere near the Corps’ $466 million price tag to finish it.

“I think this is becoming a bait-and-switch plan, something private businesses would be prosecuted for if they did it,” said Steve Hollern, a local accountant and former chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party. “What the TRV is doing is buying property, tearing down buildings, using eminent domain, and having very little chance of getting the federal funds they need to complete it.

Granger wholeheartedly disagreed. “I am not concerned about the federal funds drying up, because this is primarily a flood control water project, and those have been a top priority in Washington,” he said. “This is not a short-term solution to flooding issues on the Trinity River, but a long-term plan that solves a very real problem.”

There are a number of opponents to this project, but they are very much in the minority,” Granger said. “Most citizens of Fort Worth I talk to see value in this project. It will change this city in so many ways, all of them for the better.”

JD should get out more (we don't mean on 7th street).  The minority is growing.

Mayor of the Trinity River

The comments on the Fort Worth Weekly article show that some are still confused.  To clear things up, Kay Granger asked Betsy Price to run for Mayor.  Not Jim Lane.  What does that tell you?

Read the article and the comments on Fort Worth Weekly.

Trinity River Vision Eminent Domain and Stability

Seems they are just now testing the stability of the Trinity River bottom for flood gates.  Shouldn't that have been done early on in the game?  Shouldn't that have been done before displacing 90 long time property owners?  Or committing the taxpayers to a billion dollars without a say?  WHO is managing this project?

What will the cost be when it's determined unstable? 

What will the cost be when the "leaders" of the project are?

Unlike the Trinity River Vision Wakeboard article in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, this one did have the standard line of Trinity River Vision "flood control"...guess it's only a flood control project when they're taking someones property or taking money from the Federal Government.  What happens when they say no? WHO PAYS?

Double take

Check out the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle and the Fort Worth Mayor Boondoggle on Durango.

The picture alone is worth it.

Trinity River Vision Funding

There ain't any.

Oh, besides YOU, dear taxpayers.

Read about it in the Fort Worth Business Press.  YOU can't afford to miss it.  Neither can your kids.

Meanwhile the costs mount and the availability of funds is more in question than ever. The total environmental remediation cost was estimated at $22 million back in 2004. Now the cost of cleaning up a single parcel is estimated to cost $42 million. That will make any developer think twice about digging a canal through known contaminated ground.

While flood control is a mechanism for obtaining federal funding, the reality is that the project substantially increases the potential of flooding downstream. That’s the reason for increasing valley storage area in Tarrant County. The flood potential for the 800 acre development area has always been close to zero.

 How long will this project take? Is the expected $1 billion tax base worth a $3 billion investment? Be assured that the $1 billion cost now will escalate to at least $3 billion over the next thirty to forty years of construction and development. This whole project rests on political manipulation of taxpayer dollars.

Remember a few of the Star-Telegram editorials and other articles? “Taking the long view – will North Central Texas have enough water for 13 million – that’s 13 million – people?” (7/10/05), Army Corps of Engineers – A flood of bad projects (5/28/06), “Earmarks crackdown puts squeeze on Trinity Uptown” (4/14/07), “Tax money flows to the river” (7/19/09), “Trinity Uptown plan is flawed” (8/02/09),

Is there a major company or political entity in this world (barring Fort Worth and Tarrant Regional Water District) that would hire [a] lawyer from the district Attorney’s office to head up a major development project of this magnitude and scope? Of course not. So why do we, as a community of generally visionary and accomplished business and political entities, support such a boondoggle?

Arlington Heights Update

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an update on the Arlington Heights flooding issues.  Seems like we just heard something similar Saturday night at the Trinity River Improvement Partnership (TRIP) event.  They even talked about Arlington Heights, flooding, watersheds, flood plains, creeks, developers, inadequate drainage.  They may be on to something.  YOU should pay attention.

Everybody in Fort Worth lives in a watershed -- an area of land that catches rain or snow and drains into a creek or lake and eventually into the Trinity River. Public planners generations ago built pipelines that tied into those natural drains.

The 40-inch pipes in Arlington Heights are too small to handle a severe downpour. A video produced by the city shows a raging flood down Carleton Avenue in 2004 that flooded several homes. An analysis showed that during the storm, rain fell at 2.2 inches per hour.

Fixing the problem isn't as simple as cutting into the ground and upsizing the pipe.

Developers built houses over the pipes.

TRIP put on an excellent event.  We are looking forward to the next one.  We'll see YOU there.  YOU can't afford to miss it.
WHO was at the TRIP event?  Lots of folks.  Including Durango.