A few weeks ago, the mayor hosted an event that unveiled a new $250 million vision for the Trinity River Project. Before offering some reservations, Mark Lamster practically swooned over the initial designs, which, on the surface, seem to internalize some of the criticisms of previous incarnations of the plan. Like Lamster, when I looked at the latest Trinity River Project watercolors, I recognized what looks like a gesture towards compromise. The floodplain is depicted as a more dynamic, natural setting, designed to participate in — and not resist — the regular flooding events that are the heartbeat of the ecology of the river.
Now a website has been set up by the two nonprofits that have long been pushing forward the Trinity River Project, The Trinity Trust and the Trinity Commons Foundation. Reading the brief description of the new park on that site, I found the kind of language that should surround any attempt at re-imagining the Trinity River. I also saw some questionable assertions.
First, here’s the good:
The park concept envisions a new naturalized river landscape that is ever-changing, just like the Trinity; during rainy seasons the design will allow for flowing waterways and lush greenery, and during the drier seasons this will transform into a marsh-wetland area with an exposed river bottom and drier plant life. Both of these sceneries are beautiful, and honor the true natural beauty of our river.
And then, the bad:
Using only 10% of the land, we can provide a four-lane parkway that will not only provide ingress and egress that will be approved by the Corp of Engineers between the levees to access the park, but may also serve as a traffic reliever for I-35 during higher traffic periods. Without the parkway, the City will have to create a more complicated system of new surface roads to access the park, which will be expensive and difficult to approve with the Corps of Engineers.
In the few weeks since this new vision was unveiled there has been plenty of blog and Facebook punditry criticizing the idea of any new vision for the park that also includes the vision for the toll road. All the old suspicions have been dragged out. Is the parkway a Trojan horse for a big, stinking highway that some members of Dallas’ business elite have been pushing for decades? How do we plan to pay for this park? Will funding snare the park project in road demands and requirements? What about the pesky details in the Trinity Toll Road’s already-approved Environmental Impact Statement that promise the feds that we will eventually build-out the highest capacity highway possible, regardless of how accommodating the initial parkway project is to the park?
And are we really to believe that the business interests who have been pushing the high-speed toll road for so many years are backing off their desire for a road that — despite evidence to the contrary — they believe will relieve highway congestion while stimulating development in neglected corners of downtown owned by Old Guard power brokers?
These questions must be answered by any new vision for the Trinity, but looking over this latest plan, I don’t even think we’re at the point in the discussion where we should tackle them just yet. Before we talk about the new park and the new road, I think we need to first talk about the real problem that exists at the very foundation of the entire Trinity River conversation.
When I look at the new park vision, while I like much of what I see, I am mostly struck by an incredible sense of political tone deafness implied by the whole idea of unveiling yet another watercolor of the Trinity River Project. I’m a bit dumbfounded by the fact that after all these years of heated debate, the people who are pushing the Trinity River Project still don’t seem to recognize — or still don’t choose to recognize — the real, fundamental problem with the project.
The problem with the Trinity River Project is not a design problem, it is a political problem. The problem isn’t so much with the way we have drawn out successive Trinity plans, but with the underlying political architecture that keeps churning out said plans. Before we can move ahead with any park or any road, the mayor, this city’s political and business elite, The Trinity Trust and the Trinity Commons Foundation all need to recognize that at its core this isn’t a conversation about a park or a road, it is a conversation about a lack of public accountability, the existence of a closed political system that has created so many failed or duplicitous visions of parks and roads over the years, and the subsequent lack of public trust in the various players and entities who keep churning out visions.
This is all about public trust, not urban design.
I kind of like the pretty new watercolors, and I am appreciative at what appears to be a gesture towards compromise. But I’m not going to look at those watercolors too long until someone involved with pushing the project forward makes some attempt at restoring the public’s trust in the Trinity River Project. That’s because until that trust is restored, we have no reason to believe that the people who are shilling this latest vision aren’t simply doing the same thing they have always done, spending civic patrons’ sincere philanthropic good will on high class park designs that mask a cynical effort to co-opt the public will and twist it towards the profitable development schemes of a few well-connected, deeply ensconced political and business elite.
How can the players restore trust? That’s a difficult question. As with any relationship, it takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work. But I have an idea for a first step.
If this new park is truly driven by the desire to “honor the true natural beauty of our river,” then how about the mayor, the nonprofits, and the politicians and business leaders who are pushing this new vision start the process by lobbying our local members of Congress to repeal the amendment Kay Bailey Hutchison attached to a spending bill in 2010 that removed the Trinity River floodplain from federal environmental oversight.
If this new Trinity plan is really about the Trinity River and honoring it’s subtle, though extraordinary ecology, start there. Let’s make sure that regardless of whatever happens or doesn’t happen in the Trinity, at the very least, the flood plain is still protected by federal policy on lands, wildlife and waterfowl refuges, and historic sites and the preservation of parklands — the two laws which Hutchison’s amendment specifically exempted the Trinity River floodway in order to make it easier for Dallas to build its big honking highway.
The New Trinity website is asking for community feedback. This is what I’m going to write them, and I hope you consider submitting something similar:
Dear Trinity Trust and Trinity Commons,
Thank you for responding to the public desire to revise the vision Trinity River Project so that it more fully takes to heart in its design the delicate and remarkable ecology of our city’s most important natural asset. However, before I can support any such vision, and in light of so many decades of misleading information and political manipulation around the Trinity River Project, I would like to see your organizations and the city of Dallas formally advocate for the repeal of SEC. 405. of PUBLIC LAW 111–212, which removes the Trinity River from basic federal environmental oversight of wildlife and waterfowl refuges, historic sites, and parkland. Until the Trinity River is once again protected by these federal laws, I do not have confidence that any proposed park vision will respect the ecology and natural beauty of the Trinity River.
Thank you.
Placing the Trinity floodway once again back within these protective guidelines — protections from which the same people advancing this new vision cleverly and skillfully helped get the Trinity River removed — would be an important first step in proving the seriousness of this more ecologically minded Trinity River park. It would go a long way in restoring the public’s trust in the sincerity of the project’s boosters and their desire to place the Trinity River’s interests truly at heart of Dallas’ future.
