From Dallas South News Wire

DALLAS/FORT WORTH – Whether as a commercial barge canal, environmental resource or potential riverfront tourism destination, plans for the Trinity River have been topics of considerable debate for generations of North Texans. “Pave it,” suggested social commentator Will Rogers when asked what he would recommend. With a renewed interest in the redevelopment of the Trinity River in North Texas, the need to balance public and private interests is once again in the spotlight.

This month, KERA’s multimedia project Living with the Trinity explores a fascinating chapter in the river’s political history and looks at current plans to bring North Texans into closer contact with the river. The four-part radio series Banking on the River airs Tuesday, November 17 to Friday November 20 on KERA-FM during Morning Edition (5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.) and All Things Considered (4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.). A one-hour television documentary, Living with the Trinity, premieres at 9:00 p.m. Monday, November 23 on KERA-TV. The Web site, at TrinityRiverTexas.org, launched last spring. The television program and radio reports will be posted on the Web site after broadcast.

The television documentary Living with the Trinity examines the period from 1965 to 1973 when the Trinity River was nearly transformed into a barge canal running from North Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Congressman Jim Wright of Fort Worth, working with the Johnson Administration, was able to win Congressional approval of nearly $1-billion for what would become a highly controversial project. Seventeen counties in the river basin voted on a bond issue to supplement the federal funding. The bond issue failed by just 20,000 votes and the barge canal was never built.

“The most powerful people in Texas wanted the project to succeed,” says KERA’s Executive Producer and Project Director Rob Tranchin. “Why they wanted the canal and how they were defeated constitutes an amazing chapter in Texas environmental history.”

Living with the Trinity includes interviews with former Fort Worth Congressman, U.S. Speaker of the House and canal proponent, Jim Wright, and Dallas businessman and former U.S. Congressman, Alan Steelman, who unseated four-term Congressman Earle Cabell in the 1972 election and rallied opposition to the project. Fort Worth Star Telegram Columnist Bob Ray Sanders and Lee Cullum, host of KERA’s business program CEO, offer insight from their perspectives as reporters who covered these issues for KERA-TV.

“The radio series explores some of the model waterfront developments that are inspiring the Trinity River Corridor and Trinity River Vision projects,” says KERA News Director, Shelley Kofler. “We’ll also look at the some of the challenges facing these projects.”

On Tuesday, November 17, Shelley Kofler will talk with landscape artist and author Roy Mann about design elements that are important to waterfront developments. On Wednesday, November 18, Kofler will report on Fort Worth’s inspiration for the Trinity River Vision project and the challenges of increasing cost and pollution. Thursday, November 19, Bill Zeeble looks at the success, failure and hope for the future of the canals at Las Colinas. B.J. Austin concludes the series on Friday, November 20 with a report on the challenges facing Dallas’ Trinity River Corridor project and how developers plan to connect the people with the water.

Living with the Trinity is funded by a leadership grant from The Meadows Foundation with additional support provided by The Dixon Water Foundation.