I spent some languorous late-summer hours up in Salida last weekend at the Boathouse Cantina, part of which hangs over the Arkansas River, and I marveled from my perfect perch at how well the town has embraced its waterway.
Seemed to me the children of Salida aren’t much in front of their screens playing video games on weekends, they are all down frolicking in the river like happy Huckleberrys. Half the town was down along or in the river, and musicians at the riverside bandshell serenaded hundreds of inner tubers, boogie boarders, rafters, kayakers and a tiny girl on an inflatable swan as they floated serenely by.
With beautiful riverwalk paths alongside, a downtown beach and a masterful whitewater park built into the water featuring homemade waves and monster holes, the Arkansas has really become Salida’s community centerpiece, it’s amusement park, its soul.
Now let me ask you, when’s the last time you visited the soul-streams of Colorado Springs — Fountain or Monument creeks?
Why, I wondered on my favorite musing deck, couldn’t Colorado Springs better embrace its waterways, the way Salida has?
Turns out, there are plots afoot.
Take David Leinweber for instance, owner of Angler’s Covey, a local fly fishing shop near Old Colorado City. He’s long nursed a dream of making use of his shop’s close proximity to Fountain Creek to bring fishing back to the trash-strewn, smelly stream.
And now the city is partnering with him to do just that. He recently signed a five-year lease to manage the stretch of the creek behind his property. He plans to fence in the area and improve the trout habitat. “We plan to make it into something so I can do streamside classes for people who want to learn casting and flyfishing.”
Wait, flyfishing right here in the city? But are there any actual two-eyed fish in Fountain Creek?
Turns out, yes! This guy with an untamed beard named Alan Peak keeps posting photos of the fish he’s caught in Fountain Creek on Facebook. And now a whole Facebook group of urban anglers is posting photos on Facebook.
As a result, there are suddenly all sorts of guerrilla rumblings about restoring the creek and making it more of a city focal point. And why not? Colorado Springs is years behind Pueblo, Denver, Salida and many other Colorado cities that have already discovered what great recreational resources their rivers are.
Richard Mulledy, who manages the city’s stormwater department, recently told Colorado Public Radio he thinks Fountain Creek is turning a corner in the public’s mind.
“In the last four years, we’ve made massive progress,” he said, “more progress in that relationship and the city’s attention to Fountain Creek than in the last 50 years.”
“A lot of people are starting to pay attention to Fountain Creek,” said Leinweber. “A lot of things are helping Fountain Creek right now.”
For one, he said, the Southern Water Delivery System project has freed up the city’s reliance on water flow from Pikes Peak, which means more water has been free-flowing in Fountain Creek in the last few years, a far cry from when the city once turned off the creek completely at a diversion dam because of drought conditions.
Jerry Cordova, stormwater specialist for the city’s Stormwater Enterprise, helped engineer the deal with Leinweber.
He says this and other new restoration projects are a “big paradigm shift” for his department.
“We’re not just trying to convey water from north Colorado Springs to south Colorado Springs” anymore. Instead of concrete channels and fenced-off waterways, the city is committed to building “more natural channel designs.”
“If you have something you can appreciate and enjoy, you’re going to protect it,” says Cordova.
The city also recently launched an Adopt-A-Waterway Program to encourage local businesses and other organizations to formally adopt portions of the creek for the purpose of protecting and improving water quality via twice-annual cleanups.
Miles of creekside trails have been built by Colorado Springs in recent years, and the city plans to put an expansive mountain bike park upstream of Dorchester Park along the creek, Leinweber said.
The City Council recently passed ordinances increasing fines for littering and prohibiting camping within 100 feet of a public stream to help improve water quality in Fountain Creek.
But the creek is not Salida-like yet. Even Leniweber’s dream of teaching streamside classes is at least a year away while restoration work is done. “Right now it’s not safe to even let my dog go swimming there,” said Leinweber.
“The city wasn’t taking care of it,” said Leinweber. He expects more public-private partnerships in the future to help the city manage the watershed. Such arrangements help city officials avoid the controversial whack-a-mole of breaking up homeless camps, which then move somewhere else along the river.
Once he fences it off, Leinweber says homeless people won’t be able to camp on that stretch of the creek anymore, and police will have to evict them right away if Leinweber files a complaint because it is considered “private land.”
“I have never seen the Colorado Springs government be so excited about something,” Leinweber said.
City Council President Richard Skorman told the Colorado Sun he thinks the confluence of Monument and Fountain creeks downtown could eventually be like Confluence Park in downtown Denver, where people swim, kayak and fish.
When Martin Drake Power Plant is torn down in a couple years, Leinweber thinks there’s a good chance the river will rise again. Maybe even to Salida standards.
“I have pretty high hopes,” he said.
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