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City eyeing grants to improve Ogden River as it runs through downtown area

By Mitch Shaw Standard-Examiner - | May 13, 2021

OGDEN — Ogden City has received about a half-million dollars’ worth of state and federal grant funding to continue with a perpetual effort to protect two major rivers that run through the city.

Ogden Comptroller Lisa Stout said the city recently received grants from the Utah Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, totaling $458,450. The money will be spent on two different restoration projections on the Ogden River, near the downtown area, Stout said.

The first project, which will be completed jointly with Trout Unlimited and a local ditch irrigation company, involves improving stream habitat and eliminating an open channel of the river that flows through a junk yard. A project brief from the DNR says that as the river flows through the junk yard area, it collects debris and pollutants, taking the pollution further downstream. A nearby diversion structure also concentrates flow into the embankment of the 21st street pond, creating a significant erosion problem.

The grant Ogden received will cover the first phase of the project, which includes installing a pipeline at the diversion structure and filling the side channel that has been running through the salvage yard. Other steps, which will be completed as more funding becomes available, includes developing new side channels and floodplain habitats downstream of the diversion structure, which will itself be rebuilt, and changing the grade of the river downstream of the structure to stabilize the river and ensure that fish can pass through the area.

The city will also use the money to complete emergency watershed protection measures at select spots along the river.

According to a project brief prepared by Ogden Engineer Justin Anderson, the city’s storm water drains into both the Weber and Ogden rivers. Anderson said years of degradation have left some riverbanks eroded and void of natural vegetation. Anderson says poor methods used in years past to stabilize and control flooding have contributed to the degradation of natural river landscape and have made banks susceptible to flooding.

In affected areas, the city will build “cross veins,” which are “U”-shaped structures made of boulders or logs, built across the river to concentrate stream flow in the center, reducing bank erosion. New vegetation will also be planted.

Stout said the latest efforts are part of an ongoing effort by the city to improve quality and access on both the Ogden and Weber rivers. She said the project is perpetually listed among the city’s capital improvement projects and new river projects are undertaken whenever funding is secured.

“This is an ongoing project that the city has,” Stout said.

In 2012, the city finished a two-year, $6 million restoration of the Ogden River through downtown. That project included new pavement on the Ogden River Parkway trail, the removal of nearly 13,000 tons of garbage from the river, building interior flood planes, stabilizing the river’s banks, improving water flow, building 25 new pedestrian access points and planting vegetation to buffer pollution sources, reduce channel temperatures and provide aquatic food sources for fish.

In 2011, while the restoration was being completed, the section of river successfully withstood significant flooding. During that year, 18 counties across Utah reported flood damage totaling $12.7 million as a heavy snowpack, a rapid melt and rain caused flooding in many rivers.

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