Saturday, July 21, 2012

Who Is Testing The Rockin' The Trinity River Water Where The Happy Hour Inner Tubers Float?

I was looking at the Party Pics section of DFW.com ink edition's photos of the latest Trinity River Vision Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Float and thought to myself that this sure looks fun, and surely must be the biggest number of bikinis on display in one concentrated location in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

I also thought to myself that I wish I was able to believe that the Trinity River was not way too polluted to go floating in, so I could feel all right about joining in in the regularly scheduled Thursday floating fun.

Last year, on September 22, 2011, to be precise, WFAA Channel 8 had a story titled Questions about Trinity River water quality.

To find out if the Trinity River water quality was safe to float in, WFAA hired an independent water tester to test the water where the TRV happy hour inner tube floaters float and also the water in the Cowtown Wakepark pond where wakeboarders get wet.

Somehow the Wakepark pond tested safe. The Rockin' the River area did not test safe.

Part of the WFAA article...

One of two samples at the tubing area was enough to make you sick. The sample found 387 E. coli organisms per 100 milliliters of river water. That's well above what the Environmental Protection Agency recommends as acceptable for a single sample.

An environmental scientist at the University of North Texas, Dr. Joon-hak Lee, said more samples are needed at all sampling locations to protect the public.

In response to last year's WFAA Trinity River dirty water expose, the project manager for the Trinity River Vision Authority, Woody Frossard, said the Trinity River Water District was going to start testing the tubing and wakeboard pond areas regularly, starting last fall.

Has this been done? Has the TRWD been doing testing? If so, what are the results? Does the floating public not have the right to know the results of any testing a public agency does on the water in this controversial river?

No comments: