When I took off out of here around noon for my daily constitutional I did not know where I was going, except for the Post Office. Sometimes there is something at the Post Office that determines where I go next.Today the Post Office sent me off towards Beach Street to a Chase Bank. Since I was on Beach Street it made sense to park at the spot where last month I had fun with Express Energy trucks and go for a walk on the Trinity River Levee to see how the ol' girl is doing.
Well, she is still messed up and rutted, in several places, between Beach Street and the site of the recent Express Energy water removal operation.
The Trinity Sink Hole is still in play and seems to be growing slightly bigger. Someone commented that kids have been known to fall into such things. Currently it would take a very small kid to fall into that hole. A horse stepping on that hole would seem to not be a good thing though.The thing that caught this Texas boy's eyes today was not holes or rutted up river levees. It was the astonishing amount of litter on the banks of the Trinity River.
My pictures never, even remotely, do justice to how bizarre the mess of litter looks.
Maybe, if I crop out a closeup of the litter in the first picture, it'll give you a better idea of how the bank of the Trinity River looks like a garbage dump, in some locations.
Those are not white birds you see in the tree. Those are white plastic sacks, you know, those things you bag your groceries in. From the vantage point from which the picture was taken, the bags look more like white ghosts, waving in the wind, than birds.Why does it seem that so much litter roams wild and free in Texas? Where I used to live, in the Skagit Valley of Washington, I never saw all that much litter, certainly not on the banks of the Skagit River, which, incidentally, is a much bigger river than the Trinity, and thus could handle a large volume of litter, if someone forced it to.
In Washington I never saw flatbed trailers, loaded with garbage, driving down the freeway with litter flying away. A very resourceful disposal method, which must be sanctioned as appropriate, because I've seen it happen so many times while driving the highways of Texas.
It the litter problem here in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex a function of so many people living in a relatively small area? As in there are more people living in this Texas Metroplex than the entire state of Washington.
But, in areas of Washington where it is densely populated, such as the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett Metroplex of about 3 million, there are several rivers flowing through the populated area, none of which I ever recollect seeing Trinity River levels of litter.
It's very perplexing to me. Texans seem to like their state. Many Texans are quite quick to let you know how proud they are of Texas and that they truly believe it to be a special place. Then why do so many Texans see nothing wrong about trashing up the place?I have rambled on long enough that I have space to show you a picture of the current state of the Express Energy Services damaged Trinity River Levee on this, the first Saturday of February. In the background you can see some of the litter "ghosts" that I showed you, closeup, above.
It's coming up on Saturday night. I'm fixin' to have myself a fine time in Texas tonight. See you tomorrow. Or sooner.
9 comments:
About the white tree ghosts...I bet if we did away with those weak wimpy white grocery bags and went with recycled paper ones that would cut down on the unsightly litter problem.
Heh. Sink Hole. Looks more like a burrowing owl hole than a sink hole.
You know, I've never seen you refer to yourself as a Texas boy. It's kind of weird. Even I don't refer to myself as such, lol.
As for the trash: SICK! I think it has something to do with the fact that the rivers running through Seattle have a fairly constant volume and flow whereas the Trinity most definitely does not. It also rains much more sporadically and harder here. D/FW has about half as many rainy days as Seattle but we get slightly more rain in a year. Sea-Tac also gets their rain in a smooth progression whereas all of North Texas gets it in random deluges. I'm thinking that since D/FW is at the headwaters of the Trinity we're more prone to flash flooding which will definitely sweep away much more trash than a steady nice rain. From what I've seen of Seattle, there's also a lot of green space (for being so dense) that makes rain run-off not be as big of a problem. D/FW has probably 5 times the paved areas of Seattle (D/FW is a poster child for urban sprawl while Sea-Tac is not). If Seattle had as much developed land as even just Dallas and it's suburbs, then it'd be a problem for them as well.
Jovan, I like your comment and all the thought you put into it, but I'm still thinking...get rid of the plasic white grocery bags.
Jovo---
Thank you for your indepth analysis. Having lived most of my life in the PNW I can tell you that the river levels vary widely, as in they can go real low during a drought time, and when a Pineapple Express blows in from the tropics with a load of hot air and water, melting the mountain snowpack and raining in the lowlands, well, the rivers go into flood mode the likes of which I've not seen here. And yet when the rivers go back down, you don't see piles of litter marking where the water had been.
The Seattle metro zone is as heavily developed as the D/FW zone. It's just smaller and more compact due to there being way less land to spread out on due to mountains and a lot of water bodies. Places like the Kent Valley, between Seattle and Tacoma, were pretty much farm land 40 years ago. But is now all paved over with development. The Green River runs through it. With that river's worst disposal problem being it being used by an insane serial killer as the dumping ground for his victims.
CT2---
You bag solution seems sensible to me. Do you have a newsletter to which I can subscribe?
CTsquared, of course the best answer is to get rid of the bags! :P I was just commenting on why it happens, lol.
Dango, maybe then it's the fact that the headwaters of those rivers in Seattle are clean, pristine mountains with little development whereas the headwaters of the Trinity is D/FW. I really do think the fact that D/FW is at least twice the physical size has a lot to do with it as well.
Does FW have a trash cleaning crew like a lot of other large cities? A volunteer one that doesn't include inmates?
Jovo----
Actually the D/FW Metro zone is 9,104.7 square miles in area, while the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett Metro zone is 7,223.5 square miles. So, D/FW is not at least twice the physical size of the Sea-Tac zone.
Actually there is only one river that runs through Seattle, that being the Green River. The Green River runs through miles upon miles of heavy development called the Kent Valley, before it gets to Seattle.
I think we are overlooking the obvious explanation as to why there is so much more littler flying around Texas than in other parts of the country.
There are way more litterbugs here in Texas.
Washington is way deeper into recycling, to the point that I find it annoying when I am up there, getting in trouble for putting the wrong thing in the wrong container. You just see way less roadside litter, way less litter everywhere. If there is less litter flying about, less is going to end up in rivers and lakes and other unfortunate locations.
Or so it seems to me.
Okay, okay. Fine. Stop rubbing it in that Washington is prettier and greener! :P You are definitely right about the recycling. There's little to none here. Unless you live in Greenville (Texas) which is strangely addicted to recycling. Maybe if D/FW had a gorgeous waterfront and mountains we'd care more. Hahaha. At least we aren't Las Vegas. That's a dirty city.
Texas has a litter problem. No two ways about it. A Nor' Wester myself, I can tell you. This place is a mess, thanks to proud Texans.
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