Salt River Explorer » Phoenix

Wandering Tres Rios Wetlands

Dick Richards — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:02:57 +0000

The Tres Rios Wetlands is a beautiful and serene oasis tucked behind a waste water treatment plant east of 91st Avenue and just north of the Salt River bed in Phoenix.

But make no mistake about Tres Rios; it is not just a pretty face. It is also a serious experiment to understand how wetlands can improve water quality and provide a rich wildlife habitat. While I was there I met birders who were excited about red-tailed hawks, spoke with a photographer who was looking for a bobcat, and saw trees recently felled by a beaver.

Aquatic plants that produce oxygen while assimilating dissolved solids and carbon monoxide coat the pond in the photo below, giving it its own kind of beauty. And, yes, that small speck in the left center of the photo is a duck.

Tres Rios has pedestrian trails, a ramada and picnic area, a riparian trail, and a butterfly garden (pictured below).

For more information about Tres Rios, visit the website HERE. Also, see a Phoenix Magazine story about Tres Rios HERE.

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Audubon Center Grand Opening

Dick Richards — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:04:43 +0000

The brand new Rio Salado Audubon Center will open on Saturday, October 10. It is located on the east side of South Central Avenue in Phoenix, just south of the Salt River.

The center aims to be, “…a gathering place where our neighbors can observe, learn from and celebrate the beauty of nature in their own back yard.”

Refreshments will begin at 9:30 a.m., and the opening will be at 10:00, followed by nature activities for adults and kids until 2:00. The opening is free and open to the public.

For more information about the Audubon Society in Arizona and the Rio Salado Center see:
Audubon Connecting Community With Nature (South Mountain District News)
Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center opens in October in Phoenix (Arizona Homegrown Solutions)

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Gravel Pits And Landfills

Dick Richards — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:13:27 +0000

On a one hundred and fifteen degree August afternoon, a Saturday, I attempted to drive along the dry Salt River bed west of Central Avenue in Phoenix. Actually, it is impossible to “drive along” the river bed because the city roads that parallel the bed, on both the north and south sides, are in most places at least a half mile away. In order to stay with the bed I had to steer a zigzag course, crossing the bed every few miles on streets carried by bridges or laid within the bed. These latter streets bear bright yellow signs warning, “Do not enter when flooded.”

For most of the first six miles west of Central Avenue, on both sides of the bed, the land between the bed and the nearest parallel street is occupied by landfills and open pits where aggregate–sand, stone, and rock–is quarried.

The sky and distant mountains were quite beautiful that day. The landscape was not and won’t be on any day in the near future.

I hoped to approach the spot where the waters of the Salt once flowed into the Gila River, but it seemed that the closest I could get by car was a graffiti-strewn concrete barrier on the Gila River Indian Reservation. The river bed is between the barrier and the mountains in the distance. It was far too hot for a hike.

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