River Rats 

Page 2 of 3

DANCING WITH WOLVES
When Utah Rivers Council executive director Ted Wilson was a child in the 1940s, he recalls that the Jordan was “nothing but a sewer conduit,” where he says you might find a dead horse and an old jalopy. Others remember enormous catfish bloated from feeding on carcasses and blood dumped by slaughterhouses. The 15 cities through which the Jordan flows ran their untreated sewage lines into the river, on the theory, Wilson says, that the salt in the Great Salt Lake “would take care of it.” In the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency forced cities to clean up their acts. Newly installed sewer systems could only dump effluent into the river that met federal standards.

Boogaard grew up near the Jordan. In the late 1970s, he lived a Huck Finn teenagehood, whether hanging out with elderly farmers or catching snakes and frogs with friends. Several years ago, he bought his Dutch immigrant parents’ home in Murray. He started remodeling it, then instead set about restoring native plants to the 10 acres of Murray river bank where he played as a child. “He’s like a mother bear protecting his back yard,” Wheeler says admiringly.

Boogaard’s friend Eric McCulley, who runs the state-owned Legacy Nature Preserve that protects the final three miles of the river before its dissolution in the Great Salt Lake, believes the Jordan is at a turning point, thanks to the clean-up efforts by activists like Boogaard, Wheeler and Salt. More and more, people want to clean it up. River garbage, he says, has been reduced “by a million percent.”

Travel with Boogaard on the river and it’s clear, he says, “the river has many faces.” Some of them can be beautiful, some are dangerous, while others “just irritate the hell out of me.”

In order for kayakers to get beyond the dam near Camp Williams in Bluffdale, they have to get out of the water and portage their boats across railroad tracks. There is no trail or path for them to do so, let alone a train signal to ensure they can safely cross the tracks. Bridge builders’ disregard for boaters is also apparent near 7000 South, where in 2008, Utah Transit Authority installed two I-beams. The beams are like enormous knives under a transit bridge, around which, Boogaard says, unwary canoers or kayakers could wrap their boats. Such debris-gathering obstructions are called “strainers” or “death traps” by kayakers, Frankel says. UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter notes canoe protectors will be wrapped around the beams when the new bridge is completed in the fall.

Further down the river, near the Jordan River Parkway trail, Boogaard’s mood improves, briefly, while perusing the east bank between 3300 and 3900 South—across from the Salt Lake County Metro Jail. There he finds, wetlands replete with native plants and cottonwood trees. “This is the way it should be,” he says. “Postcard beautiful, native grasses, the water, the woods. Do you even know you’re in the city? It’s similar on the other side, only it’s full of bums.” On the west bank, Boogaard says, hidden by trees and in between trailer parks and the river’s edge, is a tent community of homeless men and women.

As if on cue, five apparently homeless men approach us in a threatening manner. Like a pack of wolves, they suddenly split up and surround us. One of the spiky-haired, tattooed male youths apologizes for his “aggressive moves,” before oddly curtseying. A drunk shouts at Boogaard, “Are you straight?” According to Boogaard, he’s alluding to gays who have been known to cruise the local park.

“Never a dull moment on the Jordan,” Boogaard says.

INDIAN SOULS
One of the few areas of the Jordan Boogaard won’t boat is the 300 acres of flood plain bordered by Interstate 215, 2100 North and the Jordan’s west bank in unincorporated Salt Lake County. The river’s fate in that stretch, he says, makes him too sad.

The land is home to several stables where city residents board their horses, a model-airplane airport, an off-highway-vehicle training facility where teens can learn to ride, and a sprawling series of dirt hills and sharp inclines for SLMX’s motocross competition. Trucks ferrying loads of dirt barrel along the road from I-215 toward the development. Apart from the stables and several other private landowners, the rest of the land is state owned.

SLMX’s owner Shane Davis says he has a 10-year lease from the state to run his concession. He has plans to expand the motocross, which bike fanatic Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has been known to frequent, and build an RV campground.

Julie Fife, who boards her horse at the nearby Hunter Stables, hates the motocross. “They could have built it anywhere,” she says. The deafening noise of up to 80 bikes on the weekend has devastated the ecosystem, Fife says.

Boogaard describes the motocross location as “a poor choice of venues. It just doesn´t mesh well with anything around it—present or future.” He’s referring to Salt Lake City’s plans to build a 180-acre, $40 million regional sports complex on the rest of the site, with up to 20 soccer and six baseball fields, along with extensive parking. However, the state has yet to transfer title of the land to the city.

The motocross land is, Boogaard says, “one of two places we thought were going to be set aside as nature preserve, and now they’re going to be destroyed.” The second is the Galena stretch, lying east of the Jordan River and north of Bangerter Highway, not too terribly far from Draper’s IKEA store.

One of the river corridor’s staunchest defenders is Zach Frankel. He set up the Utah Rivers Council to protect rivers through grass-roots citizen involvement. “Rivers in Utah don’t have a legal right to exist,” he says. “They’re pipes to deliver somebody’s water rights.”