Restoring

Improving Streams previously dammed, channelized, or impaired.

A century of taming and tapping our urban creeks left them in a degraded condition. Industry and development polluted water quality. Creeks were channelized to control flooding. Banks steepened and eroded. [01] Dams and aging infrastructure eliminated fish passage, disjoined wildlife corridors, and reduced access. [02]

Restoration aims to improve health of a waterway and riparian ecosystem. Efforts improve water quality through plantings, bank stabilization, and other green infrastructure. It recreates channel meanders, removes dams, and replaces aging infrastructure. Our urban creeks will become an equitable, innovative, and resilient system of greenway corridors. They will flow across our divides and connect us all to nature in this oasis on the edge of a desert.

Daylighting

Uncovering streams Previously buried in a pipe.

In the early 20th century, as urbanization gripped the Salt Lake Valley, creeks gave way to concrete and asphalt, bricks and mortar. Waterways were diverted from aboveground channels into stormwater pipes underneath our neighborhoods. Gone.

Stream daylighting aims to restore a naturally-functioning waterway and riparian ecosystem—or to the most natural state possible. This depends on factors upstream, surrounding land-use, and the space available. Other forms of daylighting include architectural and cultural. Architectural daylighting brings a stream to surface into an engineered channel, characterized by a concrete streambed and banks. Whereas, cultural daylighting celebrates a buried stream through markers or public art to showcase its historic path. [03]