Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
Hannah Sanger, environmental coordinator for the City of Pocatello, hosted two Portneuf River Visioning Working Group meetings on Jan. 27 and 28. The goal of the meetings was to reach out to the community about the current project the city is working on to revitalize the Portneuf River.
Approximately nine months ago, the city received a grant from the US Army Corps of Engineering (USACE) to develop a vision of how the city could rejuvenate the sections of the Portneuf that run through the city.
During the meeting, Sanger said the goals of this project are to answer the questions, “How can we restore the Portneuf river, enhance tourism, economic development, fish and wildlife habitat, recreation [and] other quality of life benefits that the Portneuf provides?”
The city would like to upgrade the current concrete channel that the river runs through.
Construction began on the channel in 1968 in response to massive flooding of the river that caused damage to the city in 1962 and 1963. Its U-shape design was used for maximum efficiency, and currently has a flow rate of 6,000 cubic feet per second, a requirement of the USACE.
Throughout the year, the channel will see a flow rate ranging from approximately 45 cfps in the summer to 450 cfps during the spring runoff.
However, during the original planning in 1963, studies predicted a flood of around 5,500 cpfs once every 100 years.
This low average flow rate is something that Sanger said the community needs to keep in mind when providing input on what they would like to see in the plans.
“In the summer, we don’t have much water. We won’t have the Boise River flowing through Pocatello,” Sanger said.
The city is working with both the USACE, because they have oversight of the channel, and the ISU MILES, Managing Idaho’s Landscapes for Ecosystem Services, program.
According to the MILES program website, its goal is to provide research to help community leaders plan on how to develop ecosystem services that best suit the environment and community.
Another main concern that must be addressed is water quality. We need to keep in mind that we’re not always going to have super clean water,” Sanger said.
Mink Creek, upstream from Pocatello, dumps a lot of sediment into the river. One of the main causes of this is that from Topaz and Inkom, ID, approximately 10 miles of river has been removed to straighten it. This increases both flow rate and erosion. Approximately $2 million has already been invested to clean up the water quality.
Storm water is also a large concern. Currently, the color can range from milky to black.
If providing a swimming area is something the community wants, water quality is something the city would have to address.
At this time, the city is taking public comment to see what the community would want done, if that is a particular project or nothing at all.
Public comment will be taken until Feb. 9, when the last open house will be held. At that point the goal is to have a draft plan that will be shown to the public by early summer and finally have a plan to submit to the City Council by October or November.
Some of the ideas were inspired by cities such as San Antonio, Texas and Seoul, South Korea, where concrete canals have been turned into park-like areas for the community.
Online surveys and details can be found on river.pocatello.us.
