A new vision for the Jordan River

Acknowledged by some political leaders as the longtime toilet of Salt Lake County, the Jordan River holds promise of shedding its Rodney Dangerfield image if a committee of dedicated fans can turn enough people on to their vision.

That vision, the subject of a variety of workshops at last week's Salt Lake Countywide Watershed Symposium, is eye-catching big, fueled in part by the success stories of the Charles River in Massachusetts and the Willamette River in Oregon.

If people can galvanize to save the 80-mile-long Charles River – which winds through 22 municipalities, including Boston — why not a river like the Jordan, half its size, with only 15 cities and three counties to contend with?

"It is easy to get people excited about the Jordan River who live near it or use the parkway," said Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini. "But the Jordan River is part of all of us, regardless of where we live. It is a matter of educating people."

That will be the first step for the implementation committee the Blueprint Jordan River project facilitated by Envision Utah in cooperation with Salt Lake County and multiple government leaders.

Its vision calls for a 7,300-acre linear nature preserve and a 50-mile green trail along the river, linking users from Utah Lake in the south, where the river begins, to the Great Salt Lake in the north, at its end.

The vision is a tall order, concedes project manager Gabe Epperson. Of those 7,300 acres contemplated as permanent open space, half of those have been set aside for that purpose, while 3,800 acres are currently zoned for development.

"To try to buy all that land would be a challenge," he said. "But open space has to be protected. If urbanization continues, there will be nothing left to protect."

Cities would have to get on board, private property owners would have to be willing to deal and the public would have to be willing to foot some of the cost.

But it's been done elsewhere, Epperson pointed out.

In Portland in the mid-1990s, voters approved $135 million in bonds to acquire natural areas along the Willamette. As of July 2003, close to 8,000 acres of open space had been acquired in 251 separate property transactions.

The Jordan plan also calls for the development of regional "river centers" that would incorporate recreation-centered retail to complement the river and to make better use of existing attractions, such as the Utah State Fairpark and Thanksgiving Point, as "regional centers."

Aside from those "new" features that are envisioned for the Jordan River is the daunting task of correcting more than a century of abuse that has led to the river's imperiled condition.