Sure, DFW traffic is incredibly annoying. Texas wells running dry is an actual problem | Opinion

Drought is real and it’s here now

The explosion of growth in Texas is causing traffic headaches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and affecting neighboring counties as well. In Parker County, we face major traffic jams every day on Interstate 20.

But there are worse things than traffic delays. Parker County is experiencing its worst drought since the 1950s. This November was the driest recorded in the past 129 years, and we had the hottest September on record. Wells are losing pressure because of high demand for water.

We can survive traffic jams. We cannot survive without water.

- H.P. Ard Jr., Weatherford

McDaniel will boost Fort Worth

Fort Worth has a new deputy city manager, Mark McDaniel. I served as mayor of Kerrville from 2018 to 2022, when McDaniel was city manager. He is a virtual genius in city management. His ability to keep the big picture in mind and facilitate projects that clearly make a difference to residents is exceptional.

In Kerrville, we regularly had more than 30 big initiatives going at one time. I could ask Mark about any of them, and he would nail the details of the plan, the timetable and ways to move past hurdles.

I so appreciated his integrity as a leader here. As the saying goes, he is so honest, you could shoot dice with him over the phone. Congratulations to Fort Worth, a city I have loved since we lived there decades ago.

- Bill Blackburn, Kerrville

Meghan McCain right on Trump

After another despicable attack on John McCain by despicable human being Donald Trump, McCain’s daughter, Meghan, said this: “Trump is a piece of (expletive) election-denying huckster whose own wife won’t campaign with him.” I couldn’t agree more.

Trump’s renewed attack on John McCain was about the late senator’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. Trump had four years in office to keep his promise to come up with something better and, as with many of his other campaign promises, he could not fulfill it.

After seven years, why don’t Trump and sycophants have an ACA replacement ready for us all to see and evaluate?

- Graham Donathan, Benbrook

Helped me plan ahead for 2024

A million thanks for the excellent local art scene 2024 preview on Sunday. (1D, “What to expect from local art scene in first half of 2024”) It would have taken me many hours to visit all the websites of all the venues to collect the information myself. This will come in handy when I plan my calendar for the coming months.

- Dana Harper, Fort Worth

What Trump needs for 2nd term

This will give a few people a headache, but when it comes to Donald Trump, this is the solution: We need Trump as president and a good Democrat for vice president. And no, I have not gone stupid.

- Patricia A. Franklin, Fort Worth

To me, diversity is discrimination

Diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, are just a substitution of one form of discrimination for another now that affirmative action has been struck down. However, Harvard University took it to the extreme when, in the name of diversity, Asian students were marginalized.

The naming of Claudine Gay as president likewise was a step in the wrong direction. She was hired after the shortest search in Harvard’s history despite an inadequate academic background — only 11 papers published in more than 20 years and clear examples of plagiarism in her work. The fact that she will continue to teach at the university and reportedly keep a salary of nearly $900,000 is an affront to every student dismissed for a single episode of plagiarism.

- Charles Andrews, Fort Worth