The River

Sept. 20, 1995; Vol. 21, Issue 14

Native American people called Santa Fe by the name of Poe Gaé—“the watering place.” For centuries, the Santa Fe River, which meandered through the city’s downtown, was the lifeblood of the community. But recently it has been deteriorating, in some parts faster than others.

The Good Part:

Above Delgado Street, the Santa Fe River flows most of the year. Mature cottonwoods and willow trees shade the cool banks and armor the earth, and water trickles over old stone masonry into rocky pools. The river is close to street level and people from the nearby east side neighborhoods linger along its banks.

The Bad Part: West of St. Francis Drive, years of misguided engineering and neglect have taken their toll. For eight months of the year, the river is often dry. Vegetation is sparse and erosion is severe. Jarral, an old Spanish word for the reeds and willows that grow along riversides, has disappeared from the local vocabulary. The river bed has been allowed to drop a foot a year to accommodate increasing runoff from storms. In some places, it is nearly 30 feet below street level. At one point the river is within 10 feet of the street.

The most graphic example of the drop in the river bed is a 16-inch sanitary sewer line that crosses the river near St. Francis Drive. In 1977, the steel pipe was at river level. Now it is more than 20 feet above the river bed. Four years ago the Army Corps of Engineers warned that if the river dropped another seven feet, the Camino Alire Bridge would be unsafe to use. Today it is in jeopardy.

The Ugly Part: At the intersection of West Alameda and St. Francis Drive, hundreds of feet of wire-wrapped riprap, sprayed with concrete, line the channel. Westsiders call this 1991 State Highway Department project "The Big Ugly." It stops erosion all right, but nothing grows on it.

Santa Fe's oldtimers recall a very different river. Until the late 1940s, water ran in the river all year long, they report. Historian Tom Chavez says his father once caught a two-pound trout while fishing in the Acequia Madre, the irrigation ditch fed by the river. The river was integral to their lives… Throughout the country there is a movement among cities to restore rivers and waterfronts as a way to revive their downtowns. Baltimore, Md., Portland, Ore., San Antonio, Texas have successfully done this; so have smaller communities all over Colorado. "Most cities that re-find their rivers get revitalized," declares Jim Corbin, the new chief of the county water company.


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