Docks' removal may hinder planned Jordan River cleanup

This morning, residents of Salt Lake City's Poplar Grove neighborhood plan to line up along the banks of the Jordan River to celebrate Earth Day with a big river cleanup.

The problem is, organizers don't know how to get the volunteers into the river, thanks to the city's recent removal of a host of boat ramps and docks.

Over the course of the past four months, the city has removed five docks from the river, public services director Rick Graham said. The docks had become unsafe, some of them had begun to break away from the bank, others were eroding, and many were useless because the river's water level has dropped, Graham said.

"These docks are docks that are very old," Graham said. "They were constructed out of concrete. They were fixed in place. They had become, in many regards, not usable. They were built to accommodate the river at a certain level. When the river was lower, they were not safe to use."

Jeff Salt, head of the Great Salt Lakekeeper organization and an avid boater along the river, said he has been working for years on a plan to create the most efficient, "user-friendly" boat docking and launching system for river users. The city's decision to remove the existing docks came without any consultation with Salt or the boaters he has spoken with, he said.

"Now I don't have a very safe way to put people in canoes," Salt said of his plans to send volunteers out to scoop garbage and debris from the river today. He said the cleanup will go ahead, but he is going to have to come up with some new way of doing it.

But Graham said he was unaware Salt had been involved in working out a plan and said the city's decision to remove the docks came after discussions with its "partners" in river planning, including boaters and state planners.

"I'm surprised to hear Jeff's involved in planning because we haven't heard from him, either," Graham said. "There's a lot of information and planning going on out there. Clearly there needs to be some better coordination in the planning process."

Friday afternoon Salt was surveying the river, trying to get a handle on what's left of the docking system. He said the river was definitely in need of a revamping of its docks, but an outright removal of the existing docks without a new plan was not the answer.

"We would agree some of these boat ramps are redundant," he said. "But some of them are functional. We're using them."

Salt said he has been working with state officials in coming up with his plan. The state, he said, has been concerned about too many ramps and docks making a mess of the river.

"They don't want to see boat ramps along the river willy-nilly. That's just clutter," Salt said. And he added that people who boat in the river don't want that, either. "We want meaningful places to launch our boats."

Graham said four docks remain within the city limits — at 1700 South, about 1000 South in Modesto Park, at the peace gardens near about 900 South and 900 West and at 200 South.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com