Category Archives: Keep River Access

Access to the river is essential for recreational uses and to enjoy the ambience of the river environment in its many settings as it travels from the mountains through the desert to Pyramid lake.

Brodhead Park east end goes to Riverside Park Apartments LLC

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Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the "old" Wells Ave bridge.
The Reno City Council unanimously approved using a 10,660 square foot portion of Brodhead Park adjacent to the Truckee River for an apartment complex (see our earlier post with maps and photos here). Below is today’s announcement from the City of Reno.

“Council approves Brodhead Park Boundary Line Adjustment and Improvement Agreement

“J.10.1 – Council unanimously approved a Boundary Line Adjustment and Improvement Agreement to convey a vacant and undevelopable 10,660-square-foot portion of Brodhead Park between Wells Avenue and Park Street south of the Truckee River Bike Path to developer Riverside Park Apartments LLC, an affiliate of Hokulia Holdings LLC. The agreement requires the developer to use the property only for an infill apartment complex and convey to the City a 1,868-square-foot parcel adjacent to the Truckee River Bike Path and spend up to $75,000 for trailhead and bike path improvements.”

– January 25, 2017 Reno City Council Highlights 

Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the "old" Wells Ave bridge.

Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the “old” Wells Ave bridge.

Overhead view of property (right-most parcel outlined in black-white) to be transferred to developers for a new apartment complex.

Overhead view of property (right-most parcel outlined in black-white) to be transferred to developers for a new apartment complex.

One Truckee River Plan adopted by Washoe, Sparks, and Reno

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Truckee River at 2nd Street in downtown Reno in June.

One-two-three – each of the local governments has now adopted the One Truckee River Plan when the Reno City Council unanimously voted for it on September 28. The Washoe County Commission and Sparks City Council approved the plan earlier this month. A year-long process established the plan with involvement of many citizens and groups and agencies from the community. The approved plan addresses numerous issues of the Truckee River (and tributaries) through the urban area of the Truckee Meadows.

Community members at the first "One Truckee River Plan" meeting in fall 2015.

Community members at the first “One Truckee River Plan” meeting in fall 2015.

The One Truckee River Plan phase one lays out goals for implementation as funding becomes available and a time-frame to accomplish them.

  • “Goal One: Ensure and protect water quality and ecosystem health in the Truckee River” has six specific objectives with more detailed sub-objectives dealing with storm water, watershed management, human impacts, trees and vegetation, wildlife habitat, and the proper functioning of the river and its floodplain lands to attenuate flooding.
  • “Goal Two: Create and sustain a safe, beautiful and accessible river connecting people and places” also has 6 specific objectives to address appropriate use and discourage illegal activities, promote planning and management between Cities and County, enhance public safety and access, ensure better transportation and restrooms, add public art and murals, provide housing for homeless and access to medical care as an alternative to living on the river.
  • “Goal Three: Create an aware and engaged community that protects and cares for the river” has five specific objectives to promote awareness and education of the river’s natural and cultural importance, increase student education and participation, add opportunities for activities for all, inspire culture of stewardship, and ensure easy access to information. The latter could include a Truckee River Visitors Center, a network of kiosks, encouraging collaboration to Native American cultural uses of the river, and opportunities to acquire land or protect natural or cultural resources.
  • “Goal Four: Create an aware and engaged community that protects and cares for the river” has four specific objectives to create a sustainable organizational model to make implementation of the plan successful, develop partnerships and raise awareness of the plan, bring in funding to support the plan, and improve our understanding of the condition of the Truckee River.

The One Truckee River Plan – OTR Plan – is probably the most comprehensive look, yet, at the needs of the Truckee River and how to make the river a better place to visit while improving water quality, safety, accessibility, and helping residents and visitors to understand what makes a river “healthy”.

Truckee River Walk along Riverside Drive.

Truckee River Walk along Riverside Drive.

Organizations which were key to pursuing and moving the plan to adoption are The Nevada Land Trust and Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful. The National Park Service helped with funding and local and state agencies along with the Reno Sparks Indian Colony and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

One of the key features to the plan is community education and involvement and that is always a positive to help make changes in the river corridor where they are very much-needed today. The next phase of the plan will address downstream of the Truckee Meadows where rapid development in Washoe County and Storey County continue to threaten the river and its vegetative corridor. Phase two of the OTR Plan may well be more controversial since industrial interests have dominated recently with construction of huge new buildings, roads, and bridges.

For now, we can celebrate a new approach to benefit our area’s most important natural resource – the Truckee River.

Truckee River, March 2015 - flows of 290 CFS through Reno are substantially below normal river flows.

Truckee River, March 2015

 

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“One Truckee River” Plan moving ahead

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Spearheaded by the Nevada Land Trust and Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful with funding from the National Park Service, TMWA‘s Truckee River Fund, City of Reno, the Northern Nevada Water Planning Commission, and the Washoe County Ballot Initiative Question 1 fund, phase one of the “One Truckee River” plan is moving forward.  Stakeholder groups covering 9 issues are diving deeper into topics outlined in the first joint collaboration meeting held on September 30, 2014 at the McKinley Arts and Culture Center. Phase one of the plan covers 18 miles of the urban core of the Truckee River through the Truckee Meadows from Chalk Bluff to the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility (TMWRF).

The goals of the planning effort are to create a common vision for the river, provide for comprehensive planning, a forum for collaboration & communication, coordinated action, and funding.

The 9 stakeholder groups tackle issues that are often interrelated and multi-jurisdictional. Dealing with river health, public safety, and water quality, for example, involves at a minimum, understanding how to solve problems ranging from encampments along the River to increasing biodiversity of riparian species and finding funding to accomplish them.

Outcomes from the 9 issue areas go next to the core planning team which will be meeting in February 2016.  OnStrategy will produce a draft plan based on stakeholder input by late spring 2016. Public open house meetings on the “One Truckee River” plan are now scheduled for mid to late summer 2016.

Find more on the plan and its goals at onetruckeeriver.org.onetruckeeriverplanningvisionsheet1

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Reno-Sparks’ Truckee River Trail a treasure … but graffiti, trash, & vandalism detract

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Truckee River Trail winds along the Truckee River from Ivan Sack park in Reno to Vista in Sparks (map ends at McCarran Blvd)

The Truckee River is a community asset – a treasure, really – for residents and visitors alike. Many of us spend weekends and as much free time we can get along its banks or in its water. For many residents and visitors the Truckee River Trail through both Reno and Sparks is the best way to spend a lunch hour or a day enjoying the river and absorbing a bit of nature running through our urban home. Truckee Meadows residents embraced the Truckee River and enabled the cities and county to create a trail that spans the valley from west to east right along the river.  Recently, river projects at Reno’s downtown Whitewater Park and Spark’s Rock Park enhance river function and provide very popular recreation for kayakers, rafters, and swimmers. A downtown amphitheater at Wingfield Park provides a venue for performances and events enjoyed by thousands. The Trail is continuous from Ivan Sack Park in Reno all the way to Vista in Sparks.

Truckee River Trail winds along the Truckee River from Ivan Sack park in Reno to Vista in Sparks (map ends at McCarran Blvd)

Truckee River Trail winds along the Truckee River from Ivan Sack park in Reno to Vista in Sparks (Click to expand; map ends at McCarran Blvd)

We love the Truckee River

Most of us love the river and enjoy the river and depend on the river. We want community leaders to focus more on the river – orient buildings and activities to face the river to offer inviting spaces for all of us to experience and enhance our daily lives.  And, we want the community to protect the river environment by planting and protecting the trees that line its shores, improve water quality by reducing and filtering storm runoff, improve recreational opportunities and public access for pedestrian and bicyclers, enhance fish passage by removing barriers and providing more space for the river, and create more open space along the river to protect the flood plain where it is still available as envisioned in the Community Flood Plan of 2005.  More can and should be done to protect the Truckee Meadow’s most important natural feature.

Graffiti, trash, and vandalism … OH MY …

Take a walk or ride on the Truckee River Trail today.  Depending on precisely where you end up along the Trail what you’ll be confronted with trash and vandalism and graffiti that not only detracts from the experience, but also keeps a good number of people from ever returning because they see the Trail itself as a threatening environment given to gang scrawls and homeless encampments.  Reno, Sparks and Washoe County do try to maintain the Trail and clean up the mess left by taggers and gangs and vandals but it is an unrelenting problem requiring continual input of money and personnel.  The homeless issue is a complex problem for our entire society, but it doesn’t mean that we should ignore the impact it has on the river Trail or environment.  How do city and county leaders and all of us in the Truckee Meadows better address the continual damage to the Trail so that it becomes the asset it should be?

Over the spring and summer I took some photos along the Trail which helps to document the blight that confronts the Truckee River Trail walker or biker both in Sparks and Reno.  To fix some of these problems will take a greater effort than has been available in the past. Are our leaders and community up to the challenge.

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Bruce Bledsoe’s “Truckee River Articles”

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John Champion Park in Downtown Reno

Insightful research led Bruce Bledsoe’s career as a journalist and opinion page editor for the Reno Gazette-Journal.  In 2001 Bruce Bledsoe won “Editorial of the Year” with his piece: “Private briefings affront to public.”  Retiring from the newspaper business didn’t stop his desire to research interesting topics or write about them.  Let’s just say that the Truckee River stands out as interesting being one of the most fought over rivers in the nation.  Bruce has taken up the challenge to fill in the gaps in all of our knowledge of our iconic river with an entire series on the Truckee River — covering topics from atmospheric storms to zeroing in on where the diminished and diminishing “flood project” is going.

Bruce has generously provided to the Yacht Club some of his most recent insightful articles on the Truckee River, but many more are soon to be available on his website.  We’ll let you know when that happens – right here.  In the meantime, enjoy these 14 copyrighted articles found in our resources page.  We’ve put the first 6 articles online already and will add others over the next couple of months.  Check back with us to learn about not only the founding mothers of the “Yacht Club”, but how the Club influenced the flood project.

John Champion Park in Downtown Reno

John Champion Park in DownTown Reno

Bruce writes about Boise’s restoration of its much maligned and neglected namesake river and how that led to the town’s green belt success story.  And what about those “flood walls” you see (too often)?  Who thought that up?  Just what were the “Vista Reefs” that the Army Corps of Engineers engineered away?  And is it possible to protect communities from flooding caused by encroachment on river floodplains and wetlands when private property rights advocates say “anything goes”?  Bruce answers these questions – and plenty more – to help you and me understand how we got to where we are today and visualize a way forward.  Thanks, Bruce!

[Click on “Resources” and find the articles you’re interested in.  If the particular article link isn’t active, check back as we are adding them a little at a time.]