Trinity Falls Dries Up And Spawns A Potentially Dangerous Whirlpool

I saw something on Northside Drive yesterday that caused me to want to ride my bike, tonight, from Gateway Park to get some pictures. Well, I got way more than I intended. I am not referring to pictures, I am referring to blogging material.

The thing I went to check out on Northside Drive will have to wait til tomorrow to be blogged about. Along with another thing I came upon tonight that thoroughly disturbed and disgusted me. No, it was not an increase in the number of Homeless People. It was something worse. As in an unwanted dosing with Trinity River water.

The thing I am blogging about right now, that I saw on tonight's bike ride, was profoundly disturbing.

As you can see in the above picture the falls over Trinity Falls, outside Gateway Park, is no longer falling. The Trinity River has fallen so low that the river is now flowing through a channel under the dam/bridge.

No big deal. That is what you are thinking, aren't you?

Well, look at the next picture and think some more.

A very big, very noisy whirlpool forms when the Trinity River runs low at this location. This impoundment of the Trinity River is used as a boating location, with a boat launch tethered on the north side of the dam.

Recently the Trinity River Vision, in conspiracy with the Tarrant Regional Water District, has been leading people to believe that it is safe and sane to go inner tubing, and swimming, in the Trinity River.

A few years ago Fort Worth suffered a horrible tragedy when 4 people drowned in the Whirlpool feature at the Fort Worth Water Gardens. Fixing this problem, and paying for resulting lawsuits, cost Fort Worth a lot of money.

In the aftermath, in a bizarre overreaction, Fort Worth's swimming pools, like those in apartment complexes, were forced, by the city, to do totally unnecessary alterations to their water circulating systems, to supposedly prevent similar tragedies to what occurred in the Water Gardens.

Meanwhile, in the Trinity River, it being a river now in competition with the Guadalupe and San Marcos River as a destination inner tubing venue, there is a HUGE WHIRLPOOL swirling. I suspect each of the Trinity River dam/bridges have similar HUGE WHIRLPOOLs swirling during this low water period.

Somehow that whirlpool I saw swirling tonight seems way more dangerous than anything I've seen swirling in any Fort Worth swimming pool.

This is very perplexing to me.