Well, no, actually the park debate (by which I assume the DMN means the referendum to remove the toll road from the floodway) did not slow, even by a day, improvements to our levee system or lack thereof.  But let’s set that aside for a bit.

Perhaps the more important question is:  Is the fact that critical levee improvements have been hijacked by the Trinity Toll Road actually news to anyone who’s been following this issue?

Let me take you back over a year ago, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers informed the city that our levees were rated “unacceptable” under the new federal standards.   The day after that announcement, the council voted to fund a study to determine the extent of the failures and plan for remediation.  It was crystal clear then (and frankly, before then) that the city’s insistence on intertwining the levee improvements with the toll road had slowed flood control improvements for years.  Take a look at the council meeting beginning at 01:59 where I point out that the mayor and council’s fixation on placing the toll road within the floodway has hopelessly intertwined the toll road with the levee improvements, thus grinding critical flood control measures to a halt.  That were it not for the toll road’s interminable delays, we could move forward on much-needed levee improvements.

That’s not news over a year later.  What’s news is that the mayor, city council, and city manager still refuse to acknowledge this reality and sever the two projects.  We can move forward on our levee improvements if we have the political will to put the safety of our residents ahead of this toll road.

In his article, Lindenberger states without attribution or explanation, “[I]n 2007, council member Angela Hunt led a referendum aimed at preventing a toll road from being built within the levees, citing worries about costs and impact on the parks. Things came to a halt again.”

Absolutely not true.  Take a look at 02:27.  No one at the city, NTTA or Corps ever stated that the referendum was slowing down their ”progress” (or lack thereof) on flood control matters.  To the contrary; city staff was adamant that the project was proceeding full-speed ahead, despite the referendum.

So I challenge Michael Lindenberger to back up his statement that the referendum delayed much-needed levee improvements by even one day.  What particular aspect of the levee project “came to a halt”?  At what point did flood control plans halt due to the referendum and later resume and who made those decisions?  What evidence exists to support this unsubstantiated claim?

Aside from this clearly erroneous assertion, there is no news in this article.  The city has known for decades that our levees are in critical condition.  The mayor, council, and city manager have known for years that by interlocking the toll road with levee improvements we are irresponsibly and interminably delaying flood control safety.

Recently, city staff estimated that bringing our levees up to federal standards will cost somewhere in the range of $50 to $150 million.  Right now, $46 million remains of the 1998 bond funds allocated to the toll road.

What will be news is when the mayor and council decide to actually put flood control safety first and not just talk about it – when the city finally decides to cut its losses on the failed, unfunded, and unapproved toll road and shift that $46 million to critically-needed levee improvements.  That will be news.

The toll road isn’t going to happen. The NTTA has said they are more than a billion dollars short in funding for the road. There are no “buckets of money” to dip into that the mayor once proclaimed were lying around for the road. The NTTA has also said that due to its current project commitments, it wouldn’t even be able to consider any other projects for five years. So, realistically speaking, the toll road is dead.

So if the toll road is dead, and the park is still viable, why on earth would we divert funds from the park instead of the toll road? We must move forward on flood safety improvements, so there’s no question we need to fund the federal levee study, and quickly. But take the money from a project that is clearly stalled, and let us get going on some park improvements that we can enjoy now.

Here’s a wrap-up of some recent news articles about the Trinity Toll Road:

“Dallas diverts Trinity bond funds to levee repairs” by Rudy Bush (Dallas Morning News)

Dallas has shifted tens of millions of dollars in Trinity River bond funds to study and repair its substandard levee system but so far has declined to use money set aside for the stalled Trinity toll road project.

Instead, $27 million has been diverted from the reconstruction of a critical floodwater pumping station along the river to form the bulk of funds for a major study of the levee system.

And today, the City Council is poised to advance an additional $4.75 million – originally intended for construction of the Trinity lakes – toward a feasibility study aimed at ensuring the levees’ future soundness.

Yet even as talk at City Hall shifts toward the possibility of holding a bond election to fund major levee repairs, there has been little discussion about using any part of $46.3 million in unspent bond funds set aside for the toll road.

“Council approves $4.75 million advance to Corps for Trinity flood control study; money comes from lakes bond money” by Steve Thompson (DMN City Hall Blog)

The City Council just approved an advance of $4.75 million – originally intended for construction of the Trinity lakes – toward a feasibility study aimed at ensuring the levees’ future soundness….

The lone dissent came from council member Angela Hunt, who said that rather than take the money from lakes funds, it should be taken from funds designated for the toll road, the prospects for which look dimmer than ever.

“So instead of using funds for the park and lakes, let’s use funds that essentially don’t have any use right now,” she said. “We cannot possibly go forward on this project that is – that is dead.”

Hunt went on: “We’re going to have to at some point admit that this toll road isn’t going to happen, and for us to throw up our hands or put our head in the sand and just pretend that this toll road’s going to get done at any cost – let me say that cost is for Dallas tax payers to bear the burden — and It’s disingenuous of us to continue on this path and tell voters that it makes sense for us to cont to spend money on a toll road that’s not going to get done.”

“Jacquielynn Floyd: How long can we stay stuck on the parkway?” (Dallas Morning News)

The hour is growing awfully dark for the Trinity Parkway, the hard-fought plan to run a major reliever road for Dallas’ painfully overloaded downtown freeways inside the river levees….

Yet way back in some timid, worrying part of my noggin, the lobe that frets about swine flu and engine noises and termites, the anxious question persists: But y’all do have a backup plan, right?

….[T]his plan really seems beset by staggering obstacles. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, permanently snakebit by the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, has repeatedly raised concerns about the Trinity levees, pushing the construction start back, and back again.

Cost estimates have increased – a lot – while funding sources are shriveling.

“Trinity toll road faces levee work delays” by Michael Lindenberger (Dallas Morning News)

The prospects for the Trinity Parkway are dimmer now than they have been in years.

A top city official said last week that the toll road again will be delayed by problems with the Trinity River levees. Work to shore up flood protection will push the road’s schedule beyond the mid-2012 start date that Mayor Tom Leppert set last year when worries first surfaced about the integrity of the 80-year-old levees downtown….

For years, and throughout the 2007 campaign, city officials touted an understanding with the NTTA that limits Dallas’ share of the road’s cost to $84 million. But since then, the price has continued to grow, and NTTA has said its ability to pay the difference has disappeared “for the foreseeable future.”

“Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Yet Again, The Dallas News Rewrites the History of Trinity River Toll Road” by Jim Schutze (Dallas Observer)

Yesterday’s paper was, for me, heaven-sent. There, on Page One, was a story by transportation reporter Michael A. Lindenberger revealing that every single thing Dallas city council member Angela Hunt has said about the toll road has turned out to be true. It revealed that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert has engaged in egregious untruths about the project….

In the 2007 referendum on plans to build a new super-highway through downtown, Hunt made two main arguments: The design of the road, which called for it to be built out between the levees in the river’s floodway, is unsafe and unsound. And in part because of this massive design flaw, the road will be far too expensive to build.

Linderberger’s story concedes that plans for the toll road went awry “after planners decided it should be built between the levees.” The story makes it clear that funding for the project is at least a billion dollars short of the cost.

So doesn’t that make Hunt 100 percent right and Leppert 110 percent wrong?

[T]he needs of the maritime industry were a substantial focus for the Corps activities as concerned the [Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet project].  At the same time, however, the safety of the citizenry of the metropolitan New Orleans area was another of its charges….The tension as to which client’s needs were more important plays a decisive role in this tragedy….[T]he Corps clearly took the position that its primary mission was to keep the shipping channel open to deep draft traffic regardless of the consequences.

As the Corps reviews and considers Dallas’ Trinity Toll Road and bridges, this significant court decision underscores the Corps’ responsibility to place the safety of Dallas residents first.  A tension exists in Dallas, as it did in New Orleans, between transportation desires and levee safety.  This court decision leaves no doubt that safety must be paramount.

Today’s Dallas Morning News has a good story by Michael Lindenberger about the effect that the federal court decision may have on Dallas’ Trinity River Project:

The corps made big mistakes over the years leading up to Katrina, said University of Texas at Dallas President David E. Daniel, a civil engineer who was chairman of a national panel of civil engineers who reviewed the failure of the levees.[Daniel] said it’s easy for residents, in both Dallas and New Orleans, to overlook a potential for disaster. Catastrophe isn’t always the first thing Dallas residents think of when they view the usually docile Trinity River.“But I can speak to another parallel [between the situation here and in New Orleans],” he said. “Even in New Orleans these devastating hurricanes of the Katrina type are extraordinarily rare. Decades go by with nothing particularly serious happening. It lulls you into a false sense of security, until that extreme event hits.”

“The corps did not place the health and safety of the public at the top of their agenda,” Daniel said Monday. “Their designs were not safe enough. So we certainly would hope that they are being more deliberate now.”…

 

Here’s what happened: Dallas has got this man-made channel of greenspace called a “floodway” where all the run-off water in the city goes. If it goes down into a storm drain, it ends up in the Trinity Floodway. The floodway has these earthen mounds running along it — levees — that are intended to keep that water in the channel and prevent it from breaking through or topping over, resulting in injury to people and property.

Since Katrina, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the arm of the federal government that inspects levees — has come up with new standards to try to avoid another Katrina-like catastrophe. As a result of their revised standards, the Corps recently gave Dallas’ levees an “unacceptable” rating. That’s a failing grade in Corps-ese. The consequence is that the city has to fix the levees to meet the Corps’ new standards.

That’s not an insignificant undertaking. It’s going to take $29 million just to study the problem and figure out how to fix it. The study funding will come from using $29 million of 1998 bond funds that were supposed to fix the Able Sump, and then requesting another $29 million in a future bond program to fix the sump.

The levee study won’t be finished until early 2012, but it’ll be done in stages. In ten months we should have the geotechnical testing done, and that will tell us whether we can pour millions of tons of concrete into the floodway a la the Trinity Toll Road.

The Mayor was very defensive about the toll road, often conflating it with the entire Trinity Project to make any criticism appear irrational and defeatist: “I want to make one point very clear. We are not in this situation because of the Trinity River Corridor Project. That is simply false. The project and the condition of the levees under the new standard set by the Corps are separate and apart from each other. If we never had a Trinity River Corridor Project, we’d be in the same situation we are in now.”

Yes and no. Look, our levees have to be fixed. The safety of Dallas residents is paramount. And I’m thrilled the Corps is making Dallas fix them. We have no idea what the cost will be, or where we’ll get the money, but ultimately, that’s significantly more important than a toll road or even a fantastic urban park.

But are these levee problems totally unrelated to the toll road? Not entirely. For the last eleven years since the Trinity Bond vote, the city has been fixated on the toll road part of the project. Sure, there have been a few projects related to flood control, but nothing like the time, energy, and focus that’s been placed on pushing the Trinity Toll Road forward. That has a cost. Jim Schutze explains in his excellent article this week, “Would somebody just tell Mayor Leppert? His Trinity River toll road doesn’t have a prayer”:

The city is in this predicament entirely because of its obsessive focus on the Trinity River project and particularly on that stupid toll road. Give me two seconds to explain.

Public entities – city halls, legislatures, Congress – all incur the same kind of opportunity costs that private enterprises do. There’s only so much money, so much time in the day and, even more important, so much capacity for focus.

If you focus on the wrong thing, you can’t focus on the right thing. Because City Hall has wasted so much time and effort on this stupid toll road – and because it has been so busy glossing over flood control issues in order to sell the road – City Hall hasn’t done what it should have done first in providing for public safety by fixing the levees.

The toll road will now be delayed by at least — at least — 20 months. (It’s important to note that there would be no delay in the toll road had we selected an alignment outside the floodway.) And because the city has unnecessarily premised other critical projects on the toll road’s completion — Project Pegasus (TXDoT’s improvements to the Mixmaster, the Canyon, and Lower Stemmons), SM Wright, the park, and economic development — all of those projects are in turn delayed by at least two years.

They don’t have to be.

I’m amazed when city staff tells me these other projects simply CANNOT go forward without the toll road. Bull. If tomorrow the Corps of Engineers came back to the city and said there is no way in hell we’re letting you build that toll road in that floodway, would the city cry like a little girl and throw up its hands and say, “I guess we can never do Project Pegasus! We’ll never fix SM Wright Freeway! That park will never be built! All that development that was supposed to happen along the park, kaput!”?

No. The city would regroup and figure out how to move forward on all the other stuff.

That’s what we should be doing now, focusing our energies on Plan B instead of letting this toll road delay all these critical projects indefinitely. The toll road is never going to happen, and we can either accept that now or later.

I vote now.