The River Runs Red
There's pig blood in the water! Dallas slaughterhouse caught dumping into riverthat supplies Houston's drinking water
The pig blood drains into the Trinity River, which supplies Houston with much ofits water.
A Dallas slaughterhouse is under investigation for dumping blood and othermeat-packing toxics into the Trinity River basin.
Columbia Packing drained materials from its factory floors through anunauthorized pipe.
Blood-red waste flows down Cedar Creek from the illicit drain.
Wow, gross . . .
A Dallas-area slaughterhouse plant is currently under investigation for dumping pig blood into a tributary of the Trinity River, which supplies one of Houston's primary water sources, Lake Livingston.
The murky wastewater even appears on a standard Google Map search of the meat-packing plant.
The story begins with a man flying a model airplane which captured aerial images of a blood-red Cedar Creek, just south of downtown Dallas. The hobbyist quickly turned the photos over to the county health department, launching a multi-organization inspection of the 99-year-old Columbia Packing Company.
"Take a drink from a tap in Houston and say ‘Thank you’ to your friends in Dallas," Dave Fehling wrote in a report for StateImpact Texas.
State and federal officials discovered an unauthorized underground pipe draining blood from the meat-packing floor directly into the creek, according to documents obtained by the Dallas Morning News, which first uncovered the criminal investigation.
As it is, the Trinity River has a terrible reputation of providing Harris County with large portions of Dallas-Fort Worth's processed wastewater.
"Take a drink from a tap in Houston and say ‘Thank you’ to your friends in Dallas," Dave Fehling wrote in a December news piece for StateImpact Texas on how the ongoing drought has had surprisingly little effect on the river.
"[Dallas] sends so much wastewater down the Trinity, even in the driest year in Texas, the river continues to flow," Fehling continued, "which means the wastewater is far more concentrated."
Nevertheless, Alvin Wright, public information officer with Houston Public Works and Engineering, told CultureMap he felt that, even in a drought, numerous naturally-occurring and manmade filtration processes in the Trinity would play a significant role in removing any pig blood pollutants.
"By the time the water gets down to Houston," he said, "there are probably no detectable signs."
Researcher Stephanie Glenn and Lisa Gonzalez at the not-for-profit Houston Advanced Research Center fully agreed with Wright.
"As disgusting as it is," Glenn said, "something that far upstream will have little effect on our area. The impact would be fairly localized."
"Natural biological processes in the river will clear up much of the waste from the plant," Gonzalez assured.
