The Tires Of The Shrunken Trinity River And Its Warnings & Dangers

What's up with all the tires in the Trinity River? Well, more accurately stated, left stranded by the Trinity River. I had not noticed this interesting one the previous time I biked out of Gateway Park to take pictures of the extremely low Trinity River. We are looking west towards downtown Fort Worth in the background, with the sand bar in the midground, which was one of my reasons to bike the Trinity Trail today, which you see in the picture below.

As you can see, this sandbar almost crosses the Trinity River bed. It appears some vehicle has driven down onto this sandbar. That seems foolish to me. In the full-size, full resolution photo I saw 3 or 4 more tires. They are located in the lower middle part of the picture. They are the little black specs. 

Above the sandbar you can see what appears to be a yellow school bus. It is not a yellow school bus. It is a yellow law enforcement bus that hauled a chain gang to the Trinity River levee to pick up litter.

My goal on this particular bike ride was to take the picture that you see above of the sandbar with the Trinity River narrowed to a trickle. And to take a picture of the Barnett Shale Natural Gas Trinity River Water Sucking Operation a few miles further down the trail, that I'd taken pictures of a few weeks ago. 

I thought it'd look interesting if that particular water sucking operation's pipes were out of the water, with the Trinity River dried up in that location. With me then pondering, as to how much of the Trinity's low level is due to the millions of gallons being drained by the gas drillers.

But. That particular water sucking operation, just past the train bridge that the Trinity Railway Express uses to travel back and forth from Fort Worth to Dallas, is gone.

All cleaned up.

That is the TRE, in the picture, heading to downtown Fort Worth. It startled me today, tooting loudly, as I was taking pictures of some interesting signage that I am about to show you. I stopped taking the sign pictures and turned around and managed to get one of the fast moving train before it moved out of camera range.

 I am standing on the Trinity Trails side spur that crosses over the Trinity River on one of the dam/bridges. This is slightly south of the 4th Street Bridge across the Trinity. The top sign says...

DANGER
 MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS
NO
WADING SWIMMING BOATING

Without that sign I'm sure a lot of people would be tempted to go wading, swimming or boating. Or inner tubing. The second sign is also interesting....

WARNING
BY ORDER OF THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH;
THE POSSESSION OF FISH  FROM THIS RIVER IS
STRICTLY PROHIBITED
DUE TO CONTAMINATION

The next picture shows an additional DANGER to the danger caused by maintenance in progress.

Is that not an amazing collection of litter and brown water swirling around the intake that goes under the dam?  This particular section of the Trinity River, with the dire warning and danger signs, is just a short distance down river from the section of the Trinity River that J.D. Granger has deemed suitable for his Trinity River Vision Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats.

I wonder what maintenance is in progress? And why this maintenance presents a danger? And what is being added to the Trinity River, after it leaves J.D. Granger's safe clean river zone, that has the Trinity so badly contaminated by the time it reaches the 4th Street Bridge that the dire warning and danger signs are needed?

I saw a couple other interesting things today. I'll blog about them later.