Kennedy: The story of the Trinity River — and our cities’ efforts to tame it

By BUD KENNEDY

bud@star-telegram.com

After 170 years of settlement, the Trinity River remains both hope and joke.

For most of that time, the river from North Texas to the Gulf was viewed as the future path of the Trinity Navigation Channel, a barge canal that planners hoped would send goods downstream and bring money back up.

Back then, nobody called the Trinity beautiful.

It was a stinky ditch in Fort Worth, a dumping ground in Dallas.

The history of the Trinity — and our cities’ efforts to tame it — is retold Monday in Living with the Trinity, a KERA/Channel 13 special.

The documentary traces the Trinity 400 miles from North Texas to Trinity Bay, introducing the people who literally live off the river.

The report mainly chronicles the 80-year civic effort to turn the Trinity into a ship channel, abandoned in 1973 after voters rejected a $150 million regional bond issue for the $1.6 billion federal project.

We can guess now that federal environmental laws would eventually have doomed the canal.

Maybe.

"We’re still wrestling with these two ways of thinking about our relationship with the Trinity," said the show’s producer and director, KERA’s Rob Tranchin.

"There have always been people who want to preserve the river. And there are other people who want to build the economy. There’s this struggle over whether to make the river useful or natural.  . . . There has never been much respect for the Trinity."

A central figure in the KERA special is U.S. Rep. Jim Wright, D-Fort Worth, who bulldogged the federal dollars.

Today, some conservatives would be screaming about "pork!" while others would thank him for bringing home the bacon.

Back in 1973, when President Nixon was calling for spending cuts, the anti-tax "tea party" voters of that day combined with environmentalists to defeat the canal plan by 55-45 percent.

Wright is quoted defending the canal: "I’ve been for progress. I’ve been for development. I’ve been for more jobs for more people."

Fort Worth economics professor Floyd Durham wrote a 1976 book on the canal plan, Trinity River Paradox.

"The canal would have been very feasible," he said by phone Friday.

"But then, is barge traffic really the best form of transportation anymore? And what do we have now that we would export down the river?"

Tranchin, the producer, knows that viewers will compare the canal idea to modern plans for the Trinity River Vision in Fort Worth and the Trinity River Corridor in Dallas.

But today’s plans don’t involve any barge canals

"People keep trying to draw parallels," Tranchin said. "I’m not sure I see that many."

He is proudest that the documentary shows life downstream.

"People don’t know much about the Trinity," he said. "If we know more about what life’s like downstream from us, then we’ll make better decisions."

All these years, and we still can’t agree on the Trinity.

Bud Kennedy’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538 Twitter @budkennedy

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