Fort Worth & Seattle's Water Projects

A day or two ago I blogged about what I thought might end up being Fort Worth's all time Biggest Boondoggle, that being the re-routing of the Trinity River through a diversion channel to build what they are calling a Town Lake and some canals, where the hope is people will live, play and eat at restaurants.

The Fort Worth project is called The Trinity River Vision.

Meanwhile, up in Seattle they already have plenty of Town Lakes, most courtesy of Mother Nature. There is no big river that runs through Seattle. But there are canals, with restaurants and residences by the canals.

Seattle is in the midst of a big water project, though. It's a bit different than Fort Worth's. The Seattle project is budgeted at $3.9 billion. The Fort Worth project is expected to cost a bit more than half a billion.

The Fort Worth project includes 3 new bridges. The Seattle project is all about 1 bridge. That being the replacement of the 45 year old Evergreen Point Bridge that crosses Lake Washington and connects with Interstate 5.

That is the current Evergreen Point Bridge in the photo. If you saw Sleepless in Seattle and remember Tom Hank's houseboat, that houseboat is moored just to the lower left of what you're looking at in the photo.

This is a floating bridge. Washington has had 2 of its floating bridges sink. The older the Evergreen Point Bridge gets, the greater the chance a storm will come along and sink it. There are no sinkable bridges in Fort Worth.

In Seattle and Washington there is a lot of public debate and input as to how the new bridge should be designed and routed. In Fort Worth the Trinity River Vision was announced as a done deal with little public debate and no public vote.

I'm guessing that the new Evergreen Point Bridge will be floating long before anything floats in Fort Worth's Town Lake. Or sinks.