I'm not certain they're telling the council the truth about the size of these lakes. I think the missing millions may be in the dirt quarries. But I may be wrong. So here's a test:
Why doesn't our council ask the engineering company designing this project, Halff Associates, this one question: how deep are you going to dig? Exactly.
The staff shows the city council pretty pictures, like this one, of things that can't be built.
As if: the "Reunion Gateway"
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And if it's more than eight feet, especially if it's 15 feet, why don't we cut our excavation costs -- now estimated at $9 million to $11 million -- in half by going only eight feet deep, as planned? And see what they say.
They're going to howl, because they want that dirt, because they're lusting after that road.
That road, by the way, is in big trouble. I had an interesting chat this week with Chris Anderson, planning director of the North Texas Tollway Authority. I asked him about some rumors I was hearing that the tollway project is $161 million in the hole -- that they can't even start on it yet, because they need that much more money up front.
"Yes," he said, "that would be essentially correct."
That's because the road won't draw enough traffic. They can't get toll projections to back up the money they would have to borrow to build it. It doesn't pay out. It's a speculative boondoggle designed to push up land values.
Here's something else the staff forgot to mention in the briefing with the watercolors on the wall: In the recently released environmental-impact statement on the river project, the Corps of Engineers found that building a highway inside the levees will ruin the value of the river as a recreational resource.
Ruin it.
"The intrusion of a vehicular freeway into the channel side of the floodway will have a negative aesthetic effect," the Corps report states. "The noise, rapid movement and exhaust generated by the traffic would reverse most of the gains created by the positive alternatives that have been previously discussed. The overall appeal of the floodway as an escape from the urban fabric would be lost by the intrusion of high-volume, high-speed traffic into the open space."
Think about all this. They say they don't have numbers. But they do. What they have is a shifting array of numbers in which there is one immutable constant -- the number of cubic yards of dirt they have to scoop out of the river bottom to build the highway they want.
The tollway authority, which is supposed to build the road, can't start because the road is such a financial loser. The Army Corps of Engineers says the highway will ruin the park value of the whole project, which is most of what it was sold on when the mayor asked us to vote for the bonds. Most of the park is "unfunded," anyway.
When I spoke with Miller in a conference room in City Hall, she offered what seems like a fair proposal. See, she's for the river project. She wants it to happen. She thinks it would be great for downtown and especially for Oak Cliff.
She said, "Why don't we find out what the truth is?"
The what?
"Why don't we find out what the truth is and then tell the people?" she said. "Why don't we say, 'Here's what we can really afford now. Here's what it would cost to finish it.' And if we need more money to finish it, let people vote on it again. But why don't we tell the truth?"
Well, sure. We're excited. Let's do some focus groups on that.
