More often than not, Jonathan Kahn feels like he’s up the proverbial creek.
And even with the benefit of a paddle, the owner of Confluence Kayaks in Denver understands that he and the small army of about 200 South Platte River-lovers assembled for Sunday’s fourth annual South Platte River Cleanup are battling a tide they currently cannot control.
Garbage and pollutants — in their many varied forms — have become the defining features of Denver’s downtown waterway, and river-dependent recreational outlets such as kayaking, rafting and fishing are suffering the collateral damage.
“As it stands now, it’s absolutely a losing battle,” said Kahn, who has helped organize the annual spring cleanup since its inception. “The next big rainstorm, there will be just as much trash going into the river.”
Still, that’s not enough to discourage the modern-day Sisyphus from fighting the good fight.
With support from a host of river-centric sponsors, the intrepid team of volunteers has paddled the channel and fanned out along the banks of 6-10 miles of the South Platte to collect 6 tons of trash in the past three years. The official weigh-in from Sunday’s offerings is still pending.
Boaters piled into rafts, canoes and kayaks to gather debris wrapped in the reeds and floating in eddies for 6 miles below the Union Street Whitewater Park put-in, while cyclists and pedestrians walked the recreation path to snatch trash littering the riverside down to Habitat Park.
Along the way, the volunteers encountered homeless squatters and river otters, rapids and rubbish, including street signs and truck tires, discarded dog toys and, yes, even one dead dog.
“It was nasty,” said L.B. Myers, the Denver trout fisherman who hauled away the small dog.
While Myers’ experience may qualify as the extreme, his description is all too common to the South Platte River where it runs through Denver. A pair of playful whitewater kayak parks at Union Street and downstream at Confluence Park have earned the reputation among paddlers as the state’s least sanitary, with the downstream park garnering nicknames of “consewage” and “confluenza” and eye-stinging wave features known as “Hepatitis A-D.”
With fishermen casting more often to carp than to the sporadic trout common in upriver reaches, fishing traffic is light, to say the least.
“I think a lot of people avoid it because they think of it as a sewer,” Kahn said of the river. “If people weren’t worried about the water quality so much, I’m sure there’d be more people using it.”
Kahn doesn’t make excuses for the river running past his downtown shop, and he admits he has had customers get sick after paddling in it. As a result, he tends to conduct kayak lessons closer to Chatfield Reservoir upstream, where the water quality is better. But when he looks at his backyard river, he still manages to look beyond reputation to see potential.
“It’s the most degraded river in the state for sure,” Kahn said. “What this could be — should be — is a recreational paradise. It’s right in the middle of town, and people should be out here able to use it without worrying about their kids getting sick and without seeing all kinds of nasty debris on the side of the river.”
With that in mind, Confluence Kayaks has teamed up with Denver Parks and Recreation partners at The Greenway Foundation and river stakeholders such as Colorado Whitewater and Denver Trout Unlimited (TU) to form an entity known as Protect our Urban River Environment, or PURE. PURE has initiated efforts to work with municipal leaders along the South Platte in Arapahoe, Denver and Adams counties to increase the focus on preventing trash and debris from getting into the river and its tributaries, as well as the actual removal.
The first step, organizers say, is to retrofit sewage and storm-water outfall pipes with pollutant traps designed to collect the garbage before it flows into the river, rather than pulling it out piece by piece. The group has approached the state’s Water Quality Control Commission about listing the river as “impaired” because of the amount of trash. The river is undergoing an EPA-enforced effort to reduce levels of E. coli and other pathogens, and PURE would like to see a similar Total Maximum Daily Load established for trash.
“We were encouraged by the momentum that these guys had established and encouraged them to work to develop an appropriate benchmark to list something for trash,” said Andrew Todd, a Water Control Commissioner and TU member who took part in Sunday’s cleanup.
Ultimately, Kahn says, what’s needed is accountability. The river community that spent its Sunday mucking through the mud to gather other people’s garbage isn’t the problem. Many of the boaters never had floated that section of the South Platte. And unless local authorities step up to address the issue, many of them never will again.
“We’re asking the entities that are responsible for the water quality on the Platte to take responsibility for it without a regulatory or enforcement body coming down and saying that from above. The city governments of Denver, of Englewood and of Littleton — anybody who has a storm-water discharge permit — we’re asking those entities to take responsibility for the situation,” Kahn said. “The Greenway Foundation has developed this plan for the South Platte River, and we don’t really feel like it can live up to its potential until the water quality is dealt with.
“Right now, the streamside areas have been improved substantially over the past 20 years, but the in-channel recreation hasn’t been dealt with. It’s really a gem that’s waiting to be polished.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
Help is on the way
The annual South Platte River Cleanup:
Stretch: Union Avenue put-in to Habitat Park (approx. 6 miles)
Trash: Six tons in the first three years
Groups involved: Down River Equipment Co., High Point Ventures, High Country River Rafters, Keen footwear, The Greenway Foundation
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