More about the Trinity River...

In my prior post, I discussed the new book on the history of an important Texas river, the Trinity River, authored by river historian Scott McFarlane. Regarding the rejection by voters in 1973 of the proposal to approve bond funding for the so called "Trinity River Project" that would have canalized the river, here is a personal anecdote that I here record. In September 1973 I was 21, a senior in college at Sewanee, and en route to Tennessee for my senior year I had driven to visit kinfolk in Navarro County, which is bounded on the east by the Trinity River. In the ancestral town of Kerens I attended an evening meeting held in the backyard of my Great Aunt Orleana Daniel Owen that was led by a leader of the Trinity Improvement Association named Bruce Smith. I understood his group to be longtime supporters for canalizing the river. To a couple dozen residents of Kerens seated in chairs arranged in a semi-circle in that backyard, Smith recommended the Trinity River Project, extolled its canal as the needed vehicle for economic development in Navarro County such as facilitating exports of sand and gravel and of the fertilizer being produced by the relatively new Nipak fertilizer plant situated between Kerens and the river on Highway 31, and urged the attendees to vote to approve the Project in an election that would occur in the following spring. I had been opposing the Project for several years, having joined the Dallas-based opposition group known as Citizens Organization for a Sound Trinity ("COST") and having requested and received the multi-volume "draft" Environmental Impact Statement that the Trinity River Authority had issued. It showed that the Project would construct a mid-river flood-control reservoir, to be named Tennessee Colony Lake, that would also be an element of the Trinity River Canal. So that night in the backyard meeting, after Smith completed his campaign speech urging the attendees to vote yes in the bond election, I rose and spoke against the Canal. I asserted that the Canal was not needed and would turn the river into an "ugly ditch." Smith reproved me, stating that "The Canal will be a beautiful thing." He added, "Your granddaddy was in favor of the Project, and YOU should be too!" While voters in Navarro County voted yes, up and down the river and in Dallas voted the bond issue down, and the Project died, fortunately.