Today Ally's Playground In Haltom City Was Dedicated To The Memory Of Ally Collins

Way back in June of 2007, day after day of rain fell on North Texas.

On June 19, 2007, Whites Branch Creek in Haltom City went into flash flood mode.

Four year old Alexandria "Ally" Collins was ripped from her mother's arms by the flood and drowned.

Today, over six years later, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Ally's Playground in Whites Branch Park in Haltom City.

In the years since Ally drowned her death has galvanized a lot of political action in the Fort Worth/Haltom City area, due to the fact that little has been done to mitigate the flash flooding problem of the creeks which run through Haltom City.

While little has been done to prevent future Haltom City flash flood drownings, millions of dollars have been spent elsewhere in Tarrant County on a project known as the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, which is promoted primarily as a much needed flood control project, even though no one has drowned in a flood in the area of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle in over a half a century, where millions of dollars had already been spent, a half century ago, to build giant levees to prevent any flash flood of the sort which killed little Ally Collins.

Ally Collins Can Not Vote So I'm Voting Basham-Nold-Kelleher For The TRWD Board In Her Memory

In the past few days I have been annoyed a time or two when I've read shills for the TRWD Board dismiss the B-N-K sweep out the corruption slate as being made up of a bunch of Tea Party nutjobs.

A couple minutes ago I learned I was not the only one who finds these Tea Party dismissive jabs as being moronic low blows, when I read the following...

While the BNK candidates do have support from the Tea Party, they also have support from the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the Libertarian Party.  They know water is nonpartisan.  You'd think a "news" paper writer would know that.

I believe the "news" paper writer being referred to is Bud Kennedy. I have read Bud Kennedy refer to the B-N-K group as Tea Partiers.

I think I am part of the B-N-K group. I am definitely not a Tea Partier. If anything I'm the opposite of that mindset. If had to politically label myself I think I would call myself a Progressive Liberal Democrat sort of person.

The TRWD Board shills seem to think that there is some sort of dark conspiracy of ulterior motives that is hitting them out of the blue. Allow me to disabuse that notion.

On June 18, 2007 four year old Ally Collins was snatched from her home by a rampaging, flash flooding Whites Branch Creek in Haltom City. The drowning of Ally Collins, along with the flash flood property damage from Whites Branch Creek and Big Fossil Creek and the follow up non-action by those whose responsibility it is to help mitigate flood dangers, galvanized the citizen reaction you are seeing in this TRWD Board election.

Back in 2010 Adrian Murray gave a speech which clearly articulates why so many voters are completely disgusted by the corrupt Tarrant Regional Water District. You can read Adrian Murray's speech in its entirety here, and a relevant excerpt below...

The Tarrant Regional Water District is responsible for flood control in the areas under its domain. It, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, had been studying the persistent flooding in the Big Fossil Creek watershed for decades. Yet nothing was ever done for, as the residents in the area were told, the money just wasn't there.

For all of Ally's short life, the focus of the TRWD had been on something not in its charter: commercial real estate development. Disguised as flood control, the project known as the Trinity River Vision was given birth by the Fort Worth City Council just days after Ally was born. The project consumed the energy, resources and time of the water district's management and board, funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a grand scheme to construct a town lake at the confluence of the Clear Fork and West Fork of the Trinity River where Fort Worth itself had been born. The watershed to the north could wait.

A feasibility study for the watershed had been initiated by the US Army Corps of Engineers in February 2001. In a letter to Congresswoman Kay Granger in November 2009, Col. Richard Muraski of the Corps stated that, "Due to a variety of issues, including a lack of consistent funding, higher priority work and technical shortcomings, completion of the study has taken longer than normal." He went on to state that the Corp recognized the "history of destructive flooding" in the area and that approximately $100,000 would be provided to "continue the studies of the Big Fossil Creek watershed."

Meanwhile, $54 million has been spent to date by the TRWD on the Trinity River Vision and the Corps of Engineers has committed $110 million to this alleged flood control project, in an area that hasn't had a significant flood in over 60 years. The project has an estimated budget of $909 million, a figure which is sure to rise.

Ally Collins could have known none of this, of course. She was just a little girl, with little girl dreams. We will never know with certainty if Ally would still be with us today if the Corps of Engineers had not been shackled with a lack of consistent funding and higher priority work. We can say, however, with some certainty, that Ally's destiny was determined in the days just after she was born, when matters of priority and profit, prestige and power, influence and arrogance merged together in the great confluence of corruption and greed that would one day sweep her away in the great dark waters of fate.

In a few minutes Progressive Liberal Democratic me is taking off to do my early voting duty for Basham, Nold and Kelleher.

And now you know why I am voting to vote the rascals out, hoping to replace them with decent, caring humans who might help prevent any future Ally's from meeting a similar horrific fate.