6 January 11 - 17, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents TROUBLED WATERS The Blue Hole in the Great Trinity Forest went viral and then dry, but what took so long? BY SIMONE CARTER G ravel crunched beneath their hiking boots as the two men neared the barren expanse, back- packs on and binoculars in hand. Dead trees dotted the horizon. A variety of tracks marked the ground, from feral hogs to coyotes to ATVs, and a couple of broken beer bottles reflected the winter sun. On this crisp afternoon in December, traffic roared by on Dallas’ U.S. Highway 175. But it looked like the pair was stepping onto the surface of the moon. Water resources professional Alexander Neal and environmental advocate Ben Sand- ifer surveyed the site of the former so-called Blue Hole in the Great Trinity Forest. Dark earth had settled where turquoise waters once shimmered. In late July, Neal filmed himself kayaking on what was then a deep, crystal-clear swamp and posted it to TikTok. He theo- rized that a water main leak had erupted, discharging millions of gallons of drinking water each day for years on end. Nutria swam by in the since-gone-viral video, which has racked up well over half a million views. Neal recalled hearing the ruptured water pipe emitting a “loud rumbling sound” be- neath his boat. While he was glad to see that the city had finally addressed the issue, he knew much damage had been done. “Standing right here, I can look out that way and see a lot of dead trees,” Neal said, pointing toward the jagged wooden silhou- ettes. “All of these without small branches on them, those are all trees that died from the water here. So, now that I get to stand here and see how many dead trees there are, it’s pretty sad.” Neal’s TikTok video and the ensuing me- dia coverage put pressure on the city to tend to the problem. The pipeline was eventually repaired and restored to service on Sept. 11. Sandifer, who sounded mildly exasper- ated when describing his own history with the leak, said he’d alerted the city to the problem years ago. Much of the surrounding woody vegetation had perished because of the pond of treated drinking water. Despite infernal Texas summers and drought, the Blue Hole’s water level stayed unnaturally persistent. Fish weren’t present in the crystalline pool, as far as Sandifer knows, because they can’t survive in chlorinated water. He did spot wading birds that are rare for this part of North Texas, not to mention beaver and river otters and nutria, the last of which he described as “a cute little cuddly thing that’s just a large rat.” After the breach was fixed, the Blue Hole went “bone dry” in nine days, Sandifer said. He conducted a search for beached animals, like turtles and frogs, but didn’t find any evi- dence of stranded soldiers: “I think every- body made it out of there clean.” That much is good, of course, but Sandifer views the case of the Blue Hole as one of gross neglect. Water is expensive in Dallas, he said. The resource is a revenue-generator for the city, he added, which acts as a “net exporter of water to other communities” in the area. As the leak raged on during last summer’s brutal heatwave, the city petitioned constit- uents to conserve by limiting their lawn-wa- tering schedules. “To see this waste, which is finished wa- ter, it’d be like a restaurant throwing com- plete hot entrees away — just taking them out of the kitchen and just chunking them: not giving them to the needy,” Sandifer said. In an emailed statement, a Dallas Water Utilities spokesperson said the department started investigating the faulty pipeline in October 2022 and finished repairs last Labor Day weekend. Both the initial leak and a subsequently discovered second leak were patched. These were likely caused by the ground shifting, she said, adding that stabi- lized backfill was used to better ensure pipe alignment. The spokesperson did not respond to questions about when the problem origi- nated and whether the city is aware of any similar leaks. She said the pipeline bled some 12,000 gallons of water each day, which would add up to 3.6 million gallons. Neal, however, called that estimate “laugh- able.” It would be akin to leaving a garden hose on at half-blast, he said. His own calculation is that 2 million gallons may have drained daily, and that’s just a conservative guess. On top of that, D Magazine reported last August that the Blue Hole seemed to show up in satellite imagery as early as 2017. That would mean the leak likely plagued the area for far longer than the city admits. “I sort of think that they’re gaslighting the people that have been trying to tell the truth about how much water has come out of there,” Neal said. “Their estimate was a horrible, horrible misjudgment of the actual discharge that has come out of that leak.” This isn’t the first time that bad-water news has dogged Dallas. In 2019, “a putrid black liquid” spilled into the Trinity River for at least a week, ac- cording to The Dallas Morning News. Offi- cials believed it to be spoiled food, maybe decaying vegetables and fruit. Several years earlier, a different kind of waste had been flung into the river: pigs’ blood. | UNFAIR PARK | Nathan Hunsinger >> p8 Water resources professional Alexander Neal (left) and local conservationist Ben Sandifer (right) stand near where the water main break was flooding the area.
