Monday, April 2, 2012

Virtually Visiting Washington's Ocean Shores Has Me Freshly Perplexed By Fort Worth's Incoming Giant Cement Ditch

No, that is not an artist's rendering of the Fort Worth Trinity River Vision Boondoggle you are looking at in the picture. What you are looking at is a postcard my favorite aunt sent me a couple days ago from Ocean Shores.

Ocean Shores is a beach town in Washington that started as a private real estate development, with big dreams, back in the late 1950s.

You can read more about Ocean Shores on my Washington blog, where you will see pictures of my brother, ex-sister-in-law, sister and Big Ed, climbing on a shipwreck.

Ocean Shores got me thinking about the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle. And Fort Worth Boondoggles in general.

Ocean Shores has 23 miles of interconnected freshwater lakes and canals. And a new multi-million dollar convention center. All built without federal earmark money. Or abusing eminent domain.

Ocean Shores attracts millions of tourists annually. Real tourists, not shoppers at a sporting goods store.

Ocean Shores has a population of around 5,000 year round residents. Fort Worth has a population approaching 800,000. Little Ocean Shores has 23 miles of lakes and canals. Built without having to give a corrupt congresswoman's son a job.

The canals of Ocean Shores and the canals of Arlington's Interlochen got me thinking anew regarding how brain dead dumb the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle is.

I also got freshly wondering why the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle has yet to become a national laughing stock, along the line of Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere.

Over a half a century ago a really bad flood caused the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees that have kept Fort Worth's inner core flood free ever since.

The idiotic Trinity River Vision Boondoggle originally saw a very small lake around 30 acres big. With canals. The very small lake soon shrank to become a very small pond of around 12 acres. I don't know what the current estimated size is. It may have shrunk to puddle size.

To make this puddle pond and canals work it was deemed, by the dimbulbs who did the deeming, that the existing levees had to be removed.

If the levees were to be removed a flood diversion channel was needed. That diversion channel then became part of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

Diverting the flood waters was needed so that the water level in the little puddle pond and the canals could be kept level.

No one considered the idea, I guess, of simply pumping water from the Trinity River into a new pond and some canals, separated from the levees. This would seem to be a much more cost effective idea. Which has worked in other locations on this particular planet.

And then there is that bizarre flood diversion channel. I assume this channel will be lined with cement.

Which will make it a big cement-lined ditch. It is across this ditch the former signature bridges are supposed to span.

Now, consider this. What other large city in the world, can you think of, has a humongous cement-lined ditch near its downtown core?

Will this humongous cement-lined ditch be so monstrous that it will be visible to the naked eye from the moon? Like the Great Wall of China?

When this cement-lined ditch is not filled with flood water, has anyone given any thought to how aesthetically stupid this thing is going to look?

I suspect, if common sense does not intervene, and the cement-lined ditch actually gets built, that it will be a world class eyesore that will give Fort Worth, for the first time, something the town has long lacked, that being an iconic structure the rest of the world recognizes as being Fort Worth.

I have learned from watching how things happen in this forsaken town, that results often do not match what the town's entrenched propagandists propagandize.

Santa Fe Rail Market, Mercado, Radio Shack Corporate Headquarters, Cabela's, Pier One Imports.

Barnett Shale Natural Gas Revenue.

And others I'm not remembering. Or don't know about.

The cement lined ditch must be in place before the levees come down. Before the first flood hits the cement lined ditch, the flood dispersal installations downriver must be in place. Like J.D. Granger's 80,000 Magic Trees that are designed to slow down the water that rushes through the cement lined ditch.

I am going to make a prediction right now. If this cement lined ditch is built and if the existing levees come down, the first flood that hits is going to bring with it at least one unexpected result.

And I am not talking about the total wipeout of the world's premiere urban wakeboard lake. I am predicting something much worse.

2 comments:

Steve A said...

The main lake is called "Duck Lake." and Kurt Cobain used to work at one of the motels. And, unlike Fort Worth, you can take a bus clear to Olympia...

Durango said...

Steve A, I am almost certain you can take a bus from Fort Worth to nowhere. I know someone who taught Kurt Cobain in 2nd grade in Montesano. My ex sister-in-law's cousin. It is all a small world when you are from Washington.