Visiting Skagit Valley Checking What Is New in Burlington & Mount Vernon's Skagit Riverwalk

I visited the Skagit Valley this morning via Google Earth. I did so due to not remembering a thing or two's location in my old hometown of Burlington. That and I wanted to see where the new public library was located.

And I wanted to check out the Skagit Flats location of a high school class reunion taking place later this month.

Eventually I found myself in Mount Vernon, and checked out, as best I could, via Google Earth, Mount Vernon's Skagit Riverwalk.

The Skagit Riverwalk covers quite a distance, from the south end of downtown, to under the Skagit River bridge you see in the background, and beyond.

In the middle left location you can see a sliver of the Skagit River. As you can see it is a pleasing clean water bluish color, not the murky muddy color I see in most rivers in North Texas, like the Wichita River and the badly polluted Trinity River.

There is not a lot of polluting opportunities upriver from Mount Vernon. As it passes through Mount Vernon the Skagit River is about five miles from its mouth in Skagit Bay.

The Skagit Riverwalk was part of a flood control project aimed at protecting downtown Mount Vernon, which is below the level of the river, when it is in flood mode. 

Unlike what I observed in a Texas town I used to live in, Fort Worth, Mount Vernon's flood control project was an actual vitally needed flood control project, not an imaginary flood control project, such as has been touted in Fort Worth for almost two decades, claiming it was vitally needed, even though no flooding had happened since the 1950s, due to flood control already in place.

Mount Vernon's flood control being vitally needed it was funded by the public. Fort Worth's imaginary flood control project, which is not vitally needed, was so not vitally needed, that no effort was made to fund the project locally, instead relying on federal funding, with that finally happening due to Biden's Build Back Better infrastructure bill.

I don't quite understand how Fort Worth's imaginary flood control project was deemed worthy of this new federal funding. It's perplexing...