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.

Unacceptable

No, not just the new rating on the Trinity River levees in Fort Worth by the Corp of Engineers, but the relationship between the Corp of Engineers and the Tarrant Regional Water District.  You know, those that have partnered with the Trinity River Vision Authority and stand to make a billion or two.  Of YOUR money.

In 2003, the same Corp reported the levees were good, needing only $10 million dollars to fix those that weren't.  WHAT happened in the past 8 years?  Not much, except the cost of the Trinity River Vision skyrocketed.

Yet another ploy in the boondoggle to try and grab more federal money.  Hey project "leaders", the feds don't have any money.  Neither do the citizens that you want to pay for the rest.

As for THE PEOPLE, it's time to get YOUR head out of the sand, and their hand out of YOUR wallet.

Read the latest fluff piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Don't miss the comments from THE PEOPLE.  They speak volumes.

The Army Corps of Engineers rated most of the levees along Fort Worth's Trinity River floodways unacceptable Tuesday but said the levee system is among the best-maintained in the country.

Water district board member Marty Leonard expressed confidence in the partnership between the district and the corps.

"I think we've worked so closely with them through the years and still are continuing to do that that we will not have a problem resolving any issues," Leonard said.

Leonard said she believes that many issues brought up in the inspection may be directly addressed by the Trinity River Vision, the flood-control and economic-development project that will run along the Trinity from the near north side to Gateway Park.

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.

What did Led Zeppelin say?

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.

Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,

When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

North Dakota is the next to go.  Historic flooding.  Not seen since 1881.  Another entire town evacuated, possibly wiped out.
 
Mayor Curt Zimbelman, speaking Wednesday morning by telephone to KXMC television, said there are several areas along the levees where officials aren't sure they control the dikes.
 
The resulting deluge is expected to dwarf the historic flood of 1969, when the Souris reached 1,554.5 feet above sea level. Zimbelman said the river was already just a tenth of an inch shy of that level at one bridge Tuesday afternoon. It's expected to hit nearly 1,563 feet this weekend — topping the historical record of 1,558 feet set in 1881 by Friday or Saturday.
 
What's the latest in Fort Worth?  Our politicians want to take the levees down.  "Flood control", Trinity River Vision style.  It's the Fort Worth Way.

WHO floods?

And WHO makes the call?

In the articles about all the states being flooded by the Mississippi River we noticed they said the same thing we heard in the Up a Creek movie.

One major factor at work is a seemingly innocuous one: concrete. Arthur Schmidt, a hydrologist and engineer at the University of Illinois, said paving over soil that would naturally absorb rainwater means that water has to go somewhere else — into the efficient network of drainage pipes beneath cities and towns that keeps streets dry.

"That issue of paving our towns isn't just right by the river, it's anywhere that you have a stream that eventually connects to that river, which is a huge portion of the country," Schmidt said.

Are you listening, Fort Worth?  Do you see what's happening to these people?  The Trinity River runs through the heart of Texas including but not limited to Fort Worth, Arlington and Dallas.  How many people live along this river and the tributaries?  The numbers are staggering and remember, all the political promises in the world can't stop the rain.  (And we wouldn't want to be standing next to one in the lightning). The Trinity River Vision is more than just a threat to your pocketbook.

An article on MSNBC might put it in perspective for you.  What if it was YOUR house they were flooding to save someone else?  What happens to food prices if all the farmland is flooded? 

"So I guess it's all about saving the rich and burying the poor?" he asked.

In addition to threatening densely populated areas, lower Mississippi flooding was a risk for as many as eight refineries and at least one nuclear power plant alongside the river.

The Army Corps of Engineers has taken drastic steps to prevent flooding. Engineers blew up a levee in Missouri — inundating an estimated 200 square miles of farmland and damaging or destroying about 100 homes — to take the pressure off floodwalls protecting the town of Cairo, Ill., population 2,800.

Bless them all.

Odd?

WHO is blowing up levees?  The same group that is wanting to take down levees in Fort Worth, Texas for the Trinity River Vision.  Same folks who should remember Katrina all too well. 

Yes, none other than the Corp of Engineers.  SOS already.

Read about it and some of the possible consequences on NaturalNews.com

"Right now the Mississippi River is in the process of going through what we call an epic flood, meaning it's more than historic; it's more than a 100-year flood, it's more like a 500-year flood," said Gene Rench from the National Weather Service, to My Fox Memphis last Thursday. "We could flood many homes, businesses, close down factories, people could drown."

Since the time of Rench's statement, the situation has only gotten progressively worse. And yet this emerging disaster has received little attention from the mainstream media, which has instead chosen to focus on other events that, to the discerning individual, appear more of a distraction than actual news.

People living all around the flood zone are being evacuated, and ACE is planning to blow up a 64-foot levee, but most Americans are too busy focusing on meaningless royalty weddings and flimsy tales of the supposed capture of dead terrorists.

What do Fort Worth and Seattle have in common?

No, not expensive, fancy streetcars.

Flooding issues.

Yahoo News is reporting record rainfall and mudslides.

Still, the National Weather Service says flooding was reported on more than 20 Washington rivers at times on Sunday.

WHO thinks it's a good idea to take the levees down?

Seems Fort Worth politicians don't own the Trinity River

Neither do Dallas ones.  Don't miss the Dallas Observer's latest.  And don't miss the similarities in WHO all is involved in the Trinity River Vision and WHY?

Different city, same questions - WHO is being put in harm's way?  WHO is paying?  WHO profits?  WHY?

That's why this mess about the levees along the Trinity River is proving to be so personally difficult for Leppert and for Neumann, who is chairman of the city council's Trinity River Committee.

At the council meeting, Leppert and Neumann started riffing—again! for the third time in three days—about how furious they are with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They say the corps keeps changing the rules on them, coming up with new requirements that delay repairs to the levee system. The levees are supposed to protect the city from flooding.


The levee problem is a huge deal. The city is up against a deadline next year. If the levees can't be fixed by then, an official notice will go out telling people that a major swath of the city, including some of the most valuable buildings downtown and near downtown, are subject to being wiped out in future floods.

Who knew?

Not the people who built the buildings. Not the people who put up the money to build the buildings. Not the people who own them now. They were told their investments were safe. For years the corps told everybody that the Trinity River levees were not only OK but excellent.

But then you have to remember: The corps is in the levee-building business. They sell levees. The corps is a half-civilian offshoot of the Army. It has to go out and drum up business.

The corps telling you that the levees they just sold you are in excellent shape is like a salesman telling you that the car he just sold you is excellent. The big wake-up would be if he said anything different.

But after Katrina, the rules changed. Congress directed the corps to go out, survey all of the nation's flood control levees and then come back and tell the truth about them.

So in April 2009, the corps came back to Dallas and said the levees along the Trinity River were not excellent any more. Actually, not good. In fact, no good. Specifically, worthless.

Without some kind of major repair or even replacement, according to the corps, the levees along the Trinity cannot be counted on to protect people from a catastrophic flood.  Actually, even from a big flood. In fact, from any flood.

What happens when the levees break?

You don't want to know.

Why would levees not be maintained in the first place?

Years later Louisiana residents are still asking that question. Those in Combine, TX are asking it now.

Check out CBS11 for the scoop.

"If it's not fixed, no telling what would happen" says resident Floy Ballantine.

City officials say board members who were supposed to maintain the levee left their positions, leaving nobody in charge.

Now, the town is scrambling to get help from the county and the Army Corps of Engineers.

America's Crumbling Infrastructure

"America's infrastructure is collapsing. Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools. And the power grid is increasingly maxed out, disrupting millions of lives and putting entire cities in the dark. The Crumbling of America explores these problems using expert interviews, on location shooting and computer generated animation to illustrate the kinds of infrastructure disasters that could be just around the bend." This is the description of the History Channel's documentary. We can only hope elected officials watched last night, if not tell them to watch the rerun.

Below are a few comments from the program you might find interesting.

Levees:
"No one really knows how many bad levees there are in America, incredibly the United States didn't begin compiling a national inventory for levees until after Katrina. It will take years to complete. Meanwhile officials have no reliable way knowing where the levees are or what condition their in. If we cant even identify who is responsible for all these levees we can't begin to fix them, maintain them and upgrade them to provide protection to the general public".


Leaking sewer lines:
"No one notices underground water pipes until they burst. Cities are sitting on time bombs, people have to die before it becomes national agenda".


Bridges:
A survivor of the I35 bridge collapse said, "To think a thing like that could happen in a major metropolitan area is beyond belief".

Mayor of Dover said:
"It's unfathomable that any group of people would say, no we'll wait til later to fix it when lives are in danger. It would be absolute catastrophe".

Sounds like another case..."Nothing was ever done, it just got worse".

Another case of -

"Nothing was ever done, it just got worse".

Dallas neighborhoods near the levees were flooded due to pumps not working.

The city council voted earlier this week to spend $26 million dollar on a study of the levees. Sylvia Lagos says, she "doesn't need a study, its been flooding since she was a kid, FIX IT".

There's a thought.

The river is suppose to crest at its highest point since the 1970's Friday.