April 2021 | Vol. 7 Iss. 04
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A (CLEANER) RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT By Darrell Kirby | d.kirby@mycityjournals.com
City officials and volunteers are making the Jordan River in West Valley City a healthier, safer ecosystem and community asset
T
he Jordan River can be an asset and a problem along its 50-mile course from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake at Farmington Bay. It offers a natural, peaceful setting for walking, biking, kayaking and canoeing through the center of northern Utah, Salt Lake, and southern Davis counties. But sections of the river over the years have drawn people experiencing homelessness, transients, and those who see it as a convenient place to dump trash and junk. Four years ago, West Valley City leaders decided to tackle the degradation of the Jordan River within city boundaries. Today, officials say areas along the river have been mostly cleared of debris and unwanted visitors. “Trash, encampments, and phragmites, it pretty much runs the whole gamut,” said West Valley City manager Wayne Pyle of what was encountered and removed during the cleanup effort. Phragmites are tall, reedy, invasive plants that grow in wetland areas and can be dense enough to hinder access to the river and take away nutrients from other plants, fish, and aquatic life. Thousands of pounds of trash and junk
have been removed from the river and its banks, everything from the usual bottles, cans, and paper products to clothing, shopping carts and furniture. “It gets really nasty really fast,” Pyle said. Pyle helped form a task force of city and county officials, parks maintenance people, law enforcement, volunteers, and other parties to take on the job of making the river and its surroundings a better place and keeping it that way. “Cleanup has been an ongoing, off-again, on-again, different-ideas-sort-of-thing as long I’ve been with the city ” said Pyle, who joined West Valley City in 1997. “We would go through good periods and bad periods.” People experiencing homelessness find the river a quiet, hidden place to set up camp, which contributes to the problem of garbage and unsanitary conditions. Pyle said those peoContinued page 5 It’s not spotless, but West Valley City officials and volunteers have made great strides to clear the Jordan River of trash and transient camps. (Darrell Kirby/City Journals)
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