What's in the Trinity River?

It ain't just alligators and PCB's.

Read about the spill on TXSharon.

Tell your Texas senator to block SB 875

It takes less than a minute to send a message to your Texas state senator telling him or her that you want SB 875 blocked from passage.

Don't let Troy Fraser and his corporate cronies
trample your property rights!

Tell your TX state senator to block SB 875

State senator Troy Fraser, chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and renowned champion of corporate interests, recently introduced his latest bad idea,  SB 875.

TAKE ACTION Click here to tell the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee to stop SB 875

In a nutshell: SB 875 allows Texas state permit holders to trample on your property rights

A permit -- for gas drilling, or anything else -- is supposed to make the permit-holder behave responsibly.

SB 875 turns that on its head – it makes a permit a “get out of jail free” card.

No matter what the gas driller (or other permit holder) does -- if they’re holding a government permit, they can’t be held accountable under Texas nuisance law.

If SB 875 becomes law, that is.

Pollution from industry can trespass onto your property all day and night, pollute it, make your family sick, kill your livestock,  and industry only has to say “I was just following my permit or rule.”

TAKE ACTION:
Tell the members of the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee: protect our property rights, oppose SB 875!

Instructions:

1. Go to the action page.
2. Go to page bottom and enter your zip code so the system can find your Senator
3. Read the sample letter that appears and edit it if possible. Customized letters have greater impact.
4. Click "Send My Message" to fax your letter to our member of the Texas Natural Resources Committee.
5. For more information, go to the action page.
6. NOTE: only Texans who are represented by members of the committee can take action

PCBs everywhere...and not a drop to drink

Read about the Trinity River contamination in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Oh goody, another "study". 

Some of these items were discussed at the recent NCTCOG TDML meeting (they didn't have an answer either) and the TRIP meeting Saturday.  

WHO says it's safe to swim in?  Just how contaminated will the Town Lake be?

PCBs have been in the Trinity for decades and have led to bans against consuming fish caught in the Clear Fork below the Benbrook Lake dam and the West Fork below the Lake Worth dam to the confluence of the Trinity in downtown Fort Worth. The ban then extends downstream all the way to the Freestone-Anderson county line.

PCBs degrade slowly and, if consumed over a long period, they can cause cancer and developmental problems as well as problems with the immune system, reproductive organs and liver.

Other than dredging, which would likely cause as many problems as it would solve, there have been no options for displacing them.

"It is also not seen as environmentally advantageous to dredge/remove the existing sediments especially in a river system," Grundmann said in written responses to the Star-Telegram's questions. "For these reasons, the state may look at other alternatives to a TMDL for PCBs in the Trinity River."

EPA Region 6 spokesman Dave Bary said finding an answer to PCB contamination in the Trinity "may take many years and will be resource-intensive."

"At the present time different program areas within EPA and TCEQ are working together with multiple stakeholders to address this problem in the Trinity River and other water bodies [creeks and streams] across the state," Bary said.

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.

Hell Yeah.

The North Central Texas Communities Alliance has won the 2010 Special Service Award from the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club!

Hats off to the NCTCA!  

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

What's the difference in NY and TX?

Newspapers.  Read the drilling article that addresses concerns with water supply in the New York Times.

And then read about the DISH, TX lawsuit against the industry on TXSharon.

While Josh Fox didn't win the Oscar, we are sure he appreciates all the free press Gasland was given.  Netflix says it's a LONG WAIT to see Gasland.  Here's hoping Gasland 2 brings home the Oscar next year!

Money and Education

Good letters to the editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week. 

Our guess is the politicians think if we spend less on education, it will be easier to take the citizens for a ride, while picking their pockets.  Educate yourself.  Someone has to protect our kids. Otherwise they are going to grow up broke, uneducated with no air to breathe and no water to drink.

We the people have disappointed God and our children. We build billion-dollar stadiums, and now we cannot pay for our schools. We worship rock stars and athletes and allow politicians and the media to demonize our educators.

We give tax breaks to the wealthy, and yet we begrudge our educators wanting an income level decent enough to house our families and provide a college education for our children.

Republicans promised us jobs, but they never told us they were going to do away with our jobs. Instead of talking cuts and what we are going to do without, can't we figure out a way to save our jobs, our education system and our middle class?

-- Joyce A. Powell, Bedford

A fee is a tax

I would like to see a law that says whenever anyone in government announces that the government is "investing" in anything, they will be subject to a $1,000 fine.

The government never invests our money; it spends it. Investing requires a return above the investment. The government never has a return on money spent.

Same goes with fees. When the government requires you to pay a fee, it's a tax, plain and simple.

I wonder if people would finally realize how much they actually pay in taxes if they saw the word "tax" instead of "fee." Same thing, but "fee" sounds so much nicer.

-- Brent Beal, Keller

STOP Electing career politicians

Unless you want more of the same. 

Read another good letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram today.

Bad air

Dave Montgomery recently reported on a document that lists a number of low rankings for Texas in comparison to other states: education, healthcare, quality of life, etc.

Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, was quoted as saying, "We're not the bottom in every category. We're first in the amount of carbon dioxide emissions and first in carcinogens released in the air. ..."

I believe what Burnam says is true. We know of several studies about the harmful emissions being sent to the Metroplex from cement plants to the south and gas wells here.

In the same issue was an article, "3 Texas Republicans target EPA regulations." The three "took aim at the Environmental Protection Agency regulations Tuesday, proposing to eliminate funding for the agency's enforcement or implementation of greenhouse gas rules."

One of them, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, said in part, "Enough is enough. ... This economic warfare the EPA is waging on the American worker must be stopped."

Maybe another category that Texans should not be proud of is our ability to continually re-elect career politicians who seem to evolve from being representatives of the people into being representatives of polluting industries.

V.T. Hunn, Fort Worth

Trinity River Supercollider Boondoggle

Read the latest from Mr. Woodard in the Letters to the Editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Thanks to the Star Telegram for publishing the letters THE PEOPLE write.  After all, that's what it's for, right?

Mr. Woodard mentions some of the mayoral candidates being proponents of this boondoggle, for those of you not in the know, that would be Betsy Price, WHO rumor has it was asked to run by the boondoggle group and Jim Lane, WHO doesn't want to give up his seat on the Tarrant Regional Water Distritct.  Things that make you go hmmm....

Financial drain

In 1991, construction began on the Superconducting Super Collider at Waxahachie, a project that had been on the drawing boards for more than 10 years. But in 1993, after investing more than $2 billion into the project, President Clinton and Congress canceled it. All that remains are 200,000 square feet of still-vacant factories and labs, and over 20 miles of carved-rock tunnels slowly filling with water.

I have long been warning that federal funds to pay half the cost of Trinity River Vision might turn out to be like the proverbial "Check is in the mail." Those warnings have been ignored by the powers that be in Congress, City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce. After millions of Fort Worth taxpayer dollars have been washed down the river, it appears, judging from a Feb. 24 front-page story, that earmarked Trinity River Vision could well join the Waxahachie Superconducting Super Collider in the graveyard of government boondoggles.

Considering that more than one of the mayoral candidates is neck high in the Trinity Vision quagmire, were I running, To Kill a Money-Eater would be Job 1 in my platform.

-- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth