The Trinity River long has carried a bad reputation for being a wicked nasty body of water that could kill a human body on contact.
According to an article published yesterday by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, that reputation is undeserved.
"Most experts," the article said, agree that the water’s fine, c’mon in. People already float inner tubes in the river as it runs through downtown Fort Worth, and others wakeboard, canoe, and kayak the Trinity. So what’s keeping you, swimmers?
A little E. coli? Ain’t no thing. Jump on in.
Testing along a stretch from Benbrook Lake to downtown Fort Worth shows the bacterium levels to be below state standards for safe water, according to the article.
Well, except for right after a big rain.
"Its E. coli standards are acceptable except when you have a lot of rain. When you have a lot of rain, the bacteria levels spike but they normally come down quickly," Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University, said in the article.
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Then there’s that whole "most experts" thing. What do the "few experts" say?
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He’ll go swimming in the Trinity right after he crosses the English Channel.
