News items from last week that involve the Salt River and its environs:
Lower Salt River is Unappreciated Gem, from the East Valley Tribune
Christmas Tree Cutting Tags to be Sold, from Tonto National Forest
Dreamers Look Anew at Valley Waterways, from Arizona Republic
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.
The President of American Rivers, Rebecca Wodder, released the following statement in April of this year following a global study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research:
This study confirms that global warming is hitting rivers first and worst. Whether it is shrinking water supplies in the Colorado and Columbia river basins, or more rain and flooding in basins like the Mississippi, or an increased threat of waterborne diseases, global warming threatens not only our rivers but the communities that depend on them.
Read the text of the American Rivers response to the study HERE. The press release with info about the study is HERE.
Join a group from Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales on a fossil hunting expedition on Argentina’s Rio Salado. An interesting adventure, done with good video quality, and great music. Titles in Spanish.
This post is a stretch from Arizona’s Salt River, but I found these videos compelling and couldn’t resist the impulse to publish them here. These folks are plucking bones out of the mud at the river’s edge!
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