Damage Done By Mother Nature & Barnett Shale Gas Drillers In Fort Worth's Gateway Park

With the Tandy Hills still drying out from our most recent deluge my fallback Saturday hiking location, for the 3rd Saturday in a row, was Gateway Park.

I really wished the Tandy Hills had been dry today, it being Halloween, so I could have searched for the mysterious Witchey Tree and the Death Van. But, going to Gateway Park gives me a good chance to check on the current status of the Barnett Gas Driller's damage done to the Trinity River levee in the process of sucking water out of the Trinity River.

I found it ironic that today at Gateway Park, by the ball fields, I saw the sign you see here, warning violators that they are subject to penalty if they commit the crime of going on the game field to practice or play an ickup game. Whatever an ickup game is.

I suppose Fort Worth wants to protect the precious fields from potential damage caused by someone playing on them. Damage like ruts.

As I walked across the bridge that leads from Gateway Park to the Trinity Trails I could hear the roar of the diesel pump busy sucking water out of the river. It was real loud today due to there being no competing noise, like wind.

I was not too shocked to see that the damage done to the levee has gotten much worse, the ruts much bigger, the mud much more widespread.

I am fairly certain the violators have suffered no penalty.

The ruts and mud are so bad now that I don't know if I could have made it past the pump, like I did before, to check out what the pump intake, stuck into the river, looks like.

I saw another interesting thing at Gateway Park today. I've made mention, previously, of the boarded up boardwalk on the southwest side of the park. The boardwalk is an elaborate work of wood that takes you down to the Trinity River by a series of switchbacks. There are 2 of these in the park. I'd not seen the other one, to see if it is boarded up, til today.

The other boardwalk is at the southeast end of the park. The times I've seen this boardwalk it has been in worse shape than the boarded up with "closed" signs one.

So, I was not too shocked to see the southeast boardwalk closed. Except it was not closed by a "closed" sign. Mother Nature closed down the 2nd boardwalk. A tree had crashed down onto the boardwalk, effectively closing it. Just beyond the closure the Trinity River had deposited a lot of mud, which made a second barrier.

That's been my exciting Halloween in Texas, so far. A cold swim well after the sun came up. Looking for ruts and mud at Gateway park. And other stuff I'm forgetting right now.