PHOENIX (By Michael Clancy, Arizona Republic) October 29, 2005

Indian Bend Wash and Town Lake also redeveloped water drainages. The wash, mostly through Scottsdale, has become a greenbelt filled with athletic fields, lakes and golf courses that often floods during heavy rain. Town Lake in Tempe created a permanent lake in the Salt River as a centerpiece of expected riverfront development.

Described as an eyesore in the center of town, the river has been renewed with a small desert stream that supports a riparian ecosystem of native plants and more than 100 species of birds. It offers educational and recreational opportunities, and officials hope it ultimately will bring about neighborhood renewal.

Basically a long, narrow park, the project stretches along five miles of Salt River bed, to the east and the west of Central Avenue, where an Audubon Society educational center will be built.

The restored river is 50 feet below the Central Avenue bridge and carves a quarter-mile-wide path through the city. Trails line the banks on both sides, with parking and access at Seventh Avenue, Central, Seventh Street and 16th Street.

Besides hiking, biking and jogging, activities planned by officials include guided tours and classes, as well as opportunities for exercise, photography and wildlife viewing.

Overseeing it all will be a staff of 11, four of them park rangers.

Luis Ibarra, president and CEO of the neighborhood agency Friendly House, said the river "could be a jewel for this community" if managed properly.

"It will make a big difference," said Pauline Tafoya, who lives near the river in south Phoenix and looks forward to a time when the project generates additional housing, business, neighborhood parks and educational opportunities. Already, school groups have worked on and toured the project.

Excavation began five years ago, after $100 million in funding was secured from the city, the Maricopa County Flood Control District and the Army Corps of Engineers.

"They excavated down 10 or 12 feet, and they still didn't get all the tires," said Danielle Taddy, park manager. A million pounds of tires were removed just at Central Avenue. Taddy said 13 landfills dotted the river on the five-mile stretch, all of them now abandoned.

"If you saw it before, you'd see it is like night and day," Ibarra said.

Once the debris was removed, the center of the riverbed was dug 10 feet lower than the existing grade, to create a "low-flow channel" for flood control, large enough to carry water downriver at times of high rainfall and water releases from upstream. Lined with aquatic plants, the channel is 200 feet wide.

Last winter's rains and the spring runoff gave the system its first test, said Karen Williams, project coordinator for the city, and the channel worked as planned.

Above the low-flow channel, at the previous river bottom, are terraces that hold 76,000 native plants, grown from cuttings or seeds found within a half-mile of the river. Notable is a grove of cottonwoods near Central Avenue, named the "thousand-tree forest," even if it consists of only hundreds of the trees that once lined the river. The project also includes a mesquite bosque, a paloverde habitat and wetlands.

The plants are nourished with water from 31 storm drains and wells that tap unused aquifers underneath the river. The wells are situated on the "overbank," which is at street level, two of them at 16th Street, one at Central Avenue and two more at Seventh Avenue. The water is not drinkable, and swimming and wading will not be allowed.

East of 16th Street, the river will get by on water drained from city streets, rainwater and occasional releases from upstream.

A key concern, says park manager Taddy, is trash that reaches the river through the drains.

Park builders are trying various ways of intercepting the trash while letting water through.

The Rio Salado joins Tempe's Town Lake as river projects that grew from ideas originally developed in Jim Elmore's classes at the Arizona State University School of Architecture.

For that and his continued efforts to upgrade the river, he is known as the "father" of the Rio Salado.

He and his classes developed their plans at a time when the river was a dried-up eyesore that was home to sand and gravel mines, dumps and heavy industry — as it remains in some parts of the Valley.

A proposal that envisioned 28 miles of lakes, whitewater rapids, campgrounds, even islands, was expected to cost more than $2.5 billion, and voters rejected the plan by a 2-1 margin in 1987.

Tempe was the first community to respond to the defeat, proceeding on its own to develop Town Lake.

In Phoenix, the city, people like Elmore and organizations like Valley Forward, which promotes environmental awareness, kept the project alive.

Besides the river itself, the city has created a plan to redevelop the area along the river, between the freeways on the north and Broadway Road on the south. City officials hope the Beyond the Banks Area Plan will result in additional housing, parks and businesses.

"All of that potential is a great thing for the surrounding neighborhoods," said Craig Echeveste, assistant to Phoenix City Councilman Doug Lingner, whose district covers the lower portion of the project. "New projects along the river will have lower intensity, replacing industries and sand and gravel operators, better aesthetics and more jobs, too. We plan to be taking away the more damaging uses and replacing them with nicer ones."

George Young, a member of the South Mountain Village Planning Committee and chairman of the Rio Salado Community Advisory Committee, said the river will be a "great asset to the neighborhood."

The next steps, he says, involve redeveloping Central Avenue both north and south of the river, to connect the project to downtown Phoenix and South Mountain Park.

"Once people get to the river, they are going to love us," he said.