The City of Amarillo will be the proud recipient of a $12.5 million grant from the Texas Water Development Board.

The money will be invested in waste water system improvements.  Before you start thinking any will be spent to improve handling of flash storm flooding of Amarillo’s streets, note the semantic difference in the respective fluid’s names.  One is water.  The other is not.  Not exactly.  To be as delicate as possible, call it "chunky soup".  Storm water runoff is actually not germane to this story whatsoever.  I repeat, nothing is being done to improve the curbside canal system that creates the curse of flooded streets when we are blessed, albeit rarely, with easily measurable precipitation.

Amarillo is going to empty the cash sack on waste water improvements, with most of that being spent on a shinny and new, some might say sexy, lift station.  For the neophytes, the waste water(chunky soup) your household contributes to the municipal sewer system, generally travels with the flow of gravity, going downhill.  Sometimes it can’t go downhill and has to be raised, pumped, or lifted. For example, the waste water problem in your South Amarillo neighborhood that you weren’t told was built on a floodplain backfilled with sawdust.  By the way, you guys have by far, the most ostentatious and opulent lift station in both counties.  Not only is it good to look at but it constantly raises Amarillo’s filth to a level where it can go downhill, as is the direction it is naturally inclined to roll.  Built during the Clinton Administration, it embodies the same morally questionable nature of his White House, with a similar philosophical belief all problems could be removed from the news cycle by deficit spending on municipal infrastructure.

The lift station on South Osage Street, now that’s a homely and depressing lift station. And it not only looks like crap, lately it can’t raise it either.  One of the older facilities in Amarillo, it is referred to as the "Elder Liftsman" among employees of the city's water department.  It was originally built during the 60’s under the Nixon Administration, which had a much different view on aesthetics.  Meaning, it didn’t matter much what it looked like, as long as you couldn’t smell it downwind while it constantly lifted Amarillo's homemade foul brew.  And although you probably don’t want to have a televised municipal ribbon cutting for groundbreaking of the new South Osage Street lift station, without it that neighborhood is going to be on the shores of Lake Brown Water by 2019.

A reminder, none of the grant money will be spent to improve storm water runoff and prevent flooding of city streets in the gutters and curbsides and or abate the continued, deliberate flooding of main artery traffic intersections during our seasonal rainy months.

It's almost as if city leaders truly believe there isn't a problem or at least they are acting like they believe there's no problem. I think it's also possible some are compelled to silence on this issue by a high ranking but yet unrevealed city official, one most likely deeply invested in corporate poo pump stocks.

 

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