Tacoma's Foss Waterway Development Authority vs. Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Authority Boondoggle

A couple days ago, whilst sorting through my YouTube videos looking for a video I made six years ago of a drive over Tacoma's Two Bridges Over Water, I came upon another video I made during that year's stay in Tacoma, a video of a walk around Tacoma's Thea Foss Waterway.

You can watch that video below, in which you will see a pair of Tacoma Link street cars, full of riders, crossing paths in Tacoma's Museum district, which is not called The Cultural District.

Those Tacoma Link street cars are free to ride from Tacoma's Intermodal Transport Center where you can hop a bus, train or streetcar, to go to all sorts of locations, after parking in a big parking garage, for free.

At the Tacoma Intermodal Transport Center you will also find Freighthouse Square, a Fort Worth Santa Fe Rail Market-like development on steroids, which has thrived for years, rather than die a quick death like Fort Worth's pitiful public market attempt.

Watching that video I made years ago, made well after the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle was well underway, with its slow motion construction, I was struck by the similarities between what Thea Foss Waterway has become and what the Trinity River Vision purports to want to be.

Both have bridges. That is the Thea Foss Waterway Bridge below, built across water in way shorter time than four years. The TRV Boondoggle currently has three simple bridges under construction, over dry land, with the water to be added later. Maybe. With these simple bridges slated to take four years to build.

Above you are looking at just a small section of the Thea Foss Waterway. What is called the Esplanade meanders along the waterway for about 1.5 miles. I believe that is about the length of the Fort Worth Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's imaginary promenade alongside its imaginary channel alongside its imaginary island.

Below is another look at the Thea Foss Waterway Esplanade. When I visited for a month in August of 2004 I had myself a mighty fine time roller blading on the Esplanade.

The Thea Foss Waterway Development is a mixed use type of deal. There is a large marina with boats of all sizes, restaurants, a big apartment complex, which you see part of on the left above, stores, parks, other amenities, including museums, some of which are accessed by crossing over a freeway spur via what is known as The Bridge of Glass.

Above you are looking at the broad stairway which leads to the aforementioned Bridge of Glass, where you will find an installation of Chihuly Glass worth millions. That cone shaped structure is part of the Museum of Glass.

Okay, now that I have given you some idea of what the Thea Foss Waterway is, let's talk about how this development came to be.

Historically the Thea Foss Waterway was an industrial zone. Those industries polluted the waterway. In 1983 the Environmental Protection Agency designated the waterway and Commencement Bay a Superfund cleanup site.

Tacoma city and business leaders then created the Foss Waterway Development Authority with its goal being the restoration of the waterway to being a dynamic part of Tacoma. From that point on the FWDA has set precedents in planning, engineering and development, in cooperation with regulatory agencies and the public.

In 2014 the result is a mixed use urban village combining housing, retail, restaurants, along with recreation amenities.

The Thea Foss Waterway is on ongoing development, growing and expanding.

So, how does Tacoma, a town a quarter the size of Fort Worth, population-wise, manage to pull of a massive public works project, successfully, including the building of bridges, water features, walkways, along with cleaning up a pollution mess, while Fort Worth dawdles along with an embarrassing boondoggle which had an explosive celebration celebrating the start of the four year construction of Three Bridges Over Nothing?

I think part of the explanation for the difference is in Tacoma adults are in charge. The executive director of the Foss Waterway Authority is not the unqualified son of a local congresswoman. The Foss Waterway Authority sets and meets clear goals with project timelines.

Fort Worth's Boondoggle has no actual goals or project timelines, unless one wants to count that four year goal to build three simple bridges over dry land.

Comparing the Foss Waterway Development Authority website with the Trinity River Vision Authority website is very revealing.

The Tacoma website it totally reality based, sharing information about projects already completed, or in progress. The Fort Worth website is mostly propaganda, sharing pseudo information about plans which have no plan or project timeline, such as the Gateway Park Master Plan.

The Fort Worth website does a lot of bragging about things they should be embarrassed about, such as their various "Products" and "Programs".  Products like ice rinks, drive-ins, breweries and wakeboard parks. Programs like Rockin' the River Inner Tube Floats and music festivals.

You will find no information on the Fort Worth website about project timelines. You will find a lot of propaganda puffery.

The Tacoma website has a page listing the Foss Waterway Development Authority's Completed Projects.

You will find no similar list on The Boondoggle's website.

The mission statement type blurbs on the two website's home pages are telling.

From the Thea Foss Waterway Development Authority website...

The Thea Foss Waterway is quickly becoming a popular place to live, work and play. Mountain views, marina access, walking distance to downtown Tacoma and nearby services make Foss Waterway an attractive master planned community. Development sites are available along the Foss Waterway, just 35 miles south of Seattle. The Foss Waterway Development Authority (FWDA) is the coordinating agency for the waterfront's development. We can be advocates for developers through our established relationships with regulatory agencies.

From the Trinity River Vision Authority website...

The Trinity River Vision Authority (TRVA) is the organization responsible for the implementation of the Trinity River Vision (TRV) - a master plan for the Trinity River in Fort Worth, Texas. It is underway now - connecting every neighborhood in the city to the Trinity River corridor with new recreational amenities, improved infrastructure, environmental enhancements and event programming. The TRV will create Panther Island (formerly Trinity Uptown), a vibrant urban waterfront neighborhood, expand Gateway Park into one of the largest urban-programmed parks in the nation and enhance the river corridor with over 90 user-requested projects along the Trinity Trails.
Every time I read the TRVB's propaganda about 90 imaginary user-requested projects I cringe. I tell you, the Fort Worth Boondogglers, led by J.D. Granger, have no shame, no matter how absurd the propaganda they spew.

A master plan to connect every neighborhood in the city to the river? Can we see that plan please?

The plan is underway? Really? Where can we check out the project timeline for that plan which is underway? Such a timeline does not exist on The Boondoggle's website.

And, before I shut up, I must add one important thing. The Boondoggle is not yet at the point, if it ever gets there, when pollution issues come up that need mitigating, such as Tacoma had to deal with. The area where The Boondoggle is boondoggling is an industrial wasteland. It is highly likely contamination is going to be encountered if digging into the ground ever actually takes place.

Does the EPA Superfund still exist? Methinks that may be the only federal money The Boondoggle may actually be able to get its hands on.....

I Want Some Chesapeake Energy Mailbox Money & Fracking Air Quality Testing Done To The Air That I Breathe

This morning I read a disturbing bit of info in Fort Worth Weekly's Static titled Migraines and Mailbox Money.

A Fort Worth mom, Mandy Mobley, was in real good shape, slender and healthy. And then she started not to feel so good.

Headaches, dizzy spells, fatigued.

Visits to doctors provided no answers.

Then, Mandy Mobeley attended a North Texas Communities Alliance meeting where a video was shown showing the chemical stew spewing from a Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale gas fracking operation.

Just like me, Mandy Mobley has a Chesapeake Energy gas fracking operation nearby.

Unlike me, Mandy Mobley leased her mineral rights to Chesapeake Energy, for which she gets paltry royalty checks.

I have been having some of Mandy Mobley's symptoms for months now. In September and October I thought the woes were allergies. I had not been an allergy prone person prior to this.

Then in early December came down with what seemed like a cold, which I later decided might have been the flu. Coughing, restricted breathing, feeling queasy.

Now I realize my bout of misery which began in early December began soon after Chesapeake Energy amped up their fracking operation in my neighborhood, with fumes of some sort clearly spewing forth, visible to the naked eye, at times.

Below is my local purveyor of fracking fumes. You can't see the fumes in the photo. When you can see the fumes they are fuming from a couple vents on top of the red boxcar like device.

The first time I ever experienced bad air pollution, and smog, was as a kid, the first time my mom and dad took us to Disneyland. The air of Southern California was so incredibly bad back then. The worst of it was when we went to Universal Studios. At that location the air was so bad it made my eyes sting and leak. It was so bad I can remember it like it was yesterday, even though this was decades ago.

The past month, or so, whatever it is my eyes are being burned by, the sensation is very similar, though much less severe, than what I experienced long ago in Southern California.

I wish Texas had not seceded, again, from the Union, and that that powerful United States agency known as the Environmental Protection Agency, still operated here. Maybe Texas should start up its own version of the EPA.

It could be called the Texas Environmental Protection Agency.

TEPA.

Does that not have a nice ring to it?

Up Early In Texas Thinking About Marcellus Shale Gas Drillers Disposing Of Fracking Fluids In Pennsylvania Rivers

It is the early morning of the 4th day of 2011 in North Texas. It is currently 10 degrees above freezing.

It was some fluke of the ISO setting on my camera that rendered the dark pre-dawn sky an un-sky-like shade of blue.

That shade of blue is sort of the unnatural shade of blue that Chesapeake Energy Hydraulic Fracturing Water Ponds are colored.

Speaking of which, the Chesapeake pond at the northeast corner of Cooks Lane and Brentwood Stair has been drawn low of late. I thought that water was the final resting place of fracking fluid that has already done its fracking, not fracking fluid waiting to do its fracking.

As long as we are on this fracking subject, I read a disturbing article in this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer about disturbing fracking fluid practices of the Marcellus Shale gas drillers in Pennsylvania.

Apparently the Pennsylvania gas drillers have been disposing of their fracking fluids via the simple disposal method of dumping the liquid in Pennsylvania rivers.

I have read nary a word of this in the newspapers local to me in Texas. Do the local newspapers not want to give the local frackers any ideas?

And how do we know the local frackers are not surreptitiously disposing of their contaminated water in Texas rivers like the Trinity?

If the gas drillers are getting away with polluting Pennsylvania rivers, with those rivers in what I would think must be a more environmentally enlightened part of America than Texas, well, one can't help but wonder what those gas drillers might be getting away with in Texas, what with the Texas regulating agencies all co-opted by gas industry infiltration.

And with the state of Texas at odds with the federal agencies, like the EPA, who's job it is to see that bad stuff is not done to the air and water of America.

Is any testing done of the Trinity River to see if any nasty fracking fluids are floating towards the Gulf of Mexico? If not, why not?

It is so bizarre to me that over the past 30 years, or so, billions of federal dollars have been spent cleaning up Superfund sites. Those being dangerously polluted parts of America. And then to allow some industry to inject dangerous chemicals into underground storage, underground, where aquifers live, well, it just seems sort of obvious that at least one of those areas of injection, will become a Superfund site of the future that likely will dwarf the Superfund sites of the past.

Fracking and the gas drillers and the nasty stuff they spew into the air I breathe has been on my mind the past couple days due to myself having what seems like an allergic reaction to something. I am not an allergic type person.

But. For instance.

Last night I had a bizarre bout of sneezing, followed by watery, itchy eyes. I was unable to read. This morning all is fine. I live very close to a Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale gas pad. As in it is less than 1000 feet distant.

Today I am going to get myself some over the counter anti-histamines. I hope drugging myself helps.

Freezing This Sunday Morning In Texas

It is 32 degrees at my location on this second Sunday of the last month of 2010.

Those 32 degrees must be why the view from my window this morning is a bit frosty.

I seem to have recovered, finally, from whatever it was that was causing me a respiratory malady. Did yesterday's wind blow the bad stuff away?

Was there bad stuff in the air of late? A lot of locals seemed to be having some breathing woes.

In Texas there is no state agency that monitors the air quality in any meaningful way.

Because Texas does not have any state agency that monitors the air quality in any meaningful way, the federal government tries to help with air and water quality issues.

Like in the past week, or so, the EPA was appalled to find that the drinking water supply to some homes in south Parker County had an acceptable level of methane and other bad stuff. Methane is another name for natural gas.

The Texas state agency that should have been appalled that the result of some poorly regulated Barnett Shale Natural Gas Driller had been contaminating a water supply, instead made the EPA and the federal government intervention the issue, making the embarrassingly bogus claim that Texas had looked into the water problem and saw no problem.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back breathing easier. For now.

Itchy Eyes & Fire From Faucets In Texas

Does it look 4 degrees above freezing looking out my window this morning of the 2nd Wednesday of the last month of 2010?

It looks cold out there to me.

Something in the air is making my eyes scratchy. Maybe this is due to the furnace running.

I'm going to put a match to water coming out of my faucet this morning to see if it lights up. I learned this morning that this is happening in Texas, with the state agency in charge of checked out such dangers instead choosing to attack the EPA due to it being a federal agency which the Texas agency feels has no business minding the business of Texas.

The EPA took a look at the homes in question and deemed them in danger of exploding.

I need to walk away from the computer now and find eyedrops to stop this incessant blinking.

Is America Better Off If Texas Leaves The Union?

That is rocking, gun-loving hunter Ted Nugent standing next to the current governor of Texas, Rick Perry.

Rick Perry is known in these parts as Governor Good Hair. Due to the ethic that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, with his hair being thought, by many, to be the only good thing about the man.

A few days ago I blogged about an ad about Rick Perry that Billy Mitchell had placed in FW Weekly.

This was about the same time that Rick Perry announced that Texas was suing the Environmental Protection Agency because the EPA would like Texas to quit putting so many nasty toxins into the atmosphere and the water.

Months ago Rick Perry brought up the idea of Texas seceding from the Union again. Apparently there are some in Texas who don't believe Texas is bound to the Union by the same ties as the rest of the state, due to some technicality from the early days when Texas transitioned from being an independent republic to merging with the United States.

The idea of Texas no longer being in the Union had me pondering if this would be a good thing or a bad thing.

How would America be different if Texas seceded in 1959, for instance?

Well, Lyndon B. Johnson would not have been a U.S. Senator or John F. Kennedy's vice-president.

JFK would not have been in Dallas on November 23, 1963. JFK likely would have served 2 full terms. We might have avoided the Vietnam Quagmire.

Race relations might have more rapidly improved, with none of the rioting of the 60s.

Without the shock of the JFK assassination and Vietnam, the 60s might not have become such a turbulent, revolutionary time.

Had JFK served out 2 terms it is highly unlikely Richard Nixon would have become President in 1968.

So, without Texas in the Union, we would not have gone through Watergate.

Without Texas the quote, "Houston, we've got a problem," would never have been uttered.

Without Texas in the Union there would have been no President George W. Bush.

Without Texas the 9/11 attacks may still have occurred, but it is unlikely we would have managed to come up with another President who would have led us into invading and occupying Iraq.

Without Texas being able to give America George W. Bush, I'm guessing the American and World economy would be in a lot better place in 2010.

I must back up in time a bit. Did George W.'s dad run as a Texan? Or from Maine? I don't remember. I'm thinking George Bush, the 1st, did do some good things for America that might have turned out differently had someone else been President. Like how Bush, the 1st, handled the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, how he handled the collapse of communism. George, the 1st, seems like such a wise man compared to his smirking offspring.

I'm sure if I pondered it longer I could think of other ways America would be different if Texas had seceded in 1959, but right now I draw a blank.

Oh. I just thought of another. If Texas were not in the Union, the EPA would have nothing to do with Texas.

Imagine a Texas with no Federal Regulating. Yikes!

Experiencing Malice In Blunderland In Fort Worth Texas

Reading FW Weekly and TxSharon this morning has me aggravated.

The FW Weekly aggravation comes from the Metropolis section, which further documented the bad behavior of the corrupt state of Texas agency that calls itself the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, an agency name which is pretty much Orwellian double-speak, due to the fact that the quality of the environment does not seem to be much of a concern to this commission.

The TCEQ seems more concerned with helping the Barnett Shale natural gas industry cover up their dirty deeds and doings.

In the FW Weekly article we learn about the different testing results, and different methodology used by the TCEQ and the little town of DISH. A little Texas town that has been ravaged, in many more ways than one, by the basically un-regulated natural gas company Blitzkrieg that has damaged lives and livelihoods in a once peaceful small Texas town.

The town of DISH has an actual, real, serve the people who elected him, type of mayor, unlike Fort Worth's corrupt Mayor Mike Moncrief, who was installed by the gas industry to help facilitate the gas driller's massive Blitzkrieg on Fort Worth. The natural gas industry pays Moncrief over $600,000 a year to be their in the henhouse fox.

DISH Mayor Calvin Tillman has been fighting back, trying to save his town and the people who live there. Eminent domain was abused in DISH when the gas drillers decided it would be a perfect location for gas compressors, which are jet engine noise level contraptions. To feed the compressors, pipelines had to be laid. So, land that people used for their livelihoods was, well, basically stolen, using the corrupt Texas legal system to do so.

I sure use the word "corrupt" a lot. I never think I'm exaggerating when I do so.

After awhile, people in DISH started not feeling as well as they did before the Natural Gas Blitzkrieg hit their town. DISH paid to have their air tested. The results showed bad, bad things were in the air they were breathing.

And now, gas industry legal lackeys have sent the town of DISH some sort of legalistic, threatening letter, the theme of which seems to be making all sorts of claims of things DISH has not done correctly.

Visit Texas Sharon to read what Mayor Tillman has to say about this latest bullying by the corrupt gas industry thugs and read the thug's intimidating letter.

We are down the Rabbit Hole here, where black is white, yes is no, wrong is right. But, it's not Alice in Wonderland, it's Malice in Blunderland.

I've been in Texas around 10 years now. In all my years of living on the West Coast I don't recollect anything ever happening that appalled me like the things I've seen happen here in Texas.

A corporation wants a new headquarters? Boot 100s of Fort Worth low income people out of their homes and build a new Radio Shack Headquarters, that Radio Shack could not afford.

A mall needs some new parking space? Abuse eminent domain to take Hurst citizen's homes for the benefit of a private business known as the Northeast Mall.

A football team wants a new stadium? Abuse eminent domain, in Arlington, to boot more than 1,000 people from their homes and apartments and businesses. And bulldoze the homes before the victims have had their day in court.

Some goofballs get the hare-brained idea that ruining the confluence of two forks of the Trinity River to make a little lake and an un-needed flood diversion channel? Abuse eminent domain, taking homes and businesses, for a "public" project that the public has never voted on, known as Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision or Trinity Uptown Project or Fort Worth's Latest Boondoggle.

A company called Chesapeake Energy, run by a man many believe to be a lying shyster, named Aubrey McClendon, wants to run a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under a street called Carter Street, in Fort Worth. The Carter Street homeowners object, but one by one, under the threat of the abuse of eminent domain, they all give in to the strong arm tactics, all but one man, Steve Doeung.

And what does the City of Fort Worth do? Does the city tell Chesapeake Energy they must find a different route, and pipe only odorized gas. No, the City of Fort Worth sends in a gang of Gestapo Stormtroopers, in the form of code inspectors and Fort Worth Police, to raid Steve Doeung's house.

Where is the outrage here in Blunderland? Okay, there is some outrage, I mean I'm outraged. Texas Sharon is outraged. Don Young is outraged. The Queen of Wink is Royally outraged. Steve Doeung is outraged. 100s, maybe 1000s are outraged.

Why is the Environmental Protection Agency not outraged by what is happening in DISH. And elsewhere in Texas?

Has the Environmental Protection Agency been co-opted somehow, like all the other government agencies in Texas that are supposed to look out for the welfare of the people, but instead look out for the welfare of those who exploit and abuse the people?

What became of Dr. Al Armendariz? Why does the EPA not order a moratorium on gas drilling activities until the issue of pollution, both of water and air, are properly vetted to everyone's satisfaction, not just the satisfaction of the drillers?

I tell you, all this Malice here in Blunderland is the most perplexing stuff I have ever witnessed. I never dreamed, when I moved to Texas, that I would somehow manage to one day find myself being terrorized by White Trucks.

P.S. The Star-Telegraph has blogged about the Star-Telegram's article today which reverses previous articles which followed the gas industry and their lackey, Mayor Mike Moncrief's party line, that being nothing harmful is entering the air from the thousands of gas wells.