The smelters that molded Utah's economic backbone also emitted toxic waste that has effectively scared off birds and wildlife through the valley's midsection in recent decades.
In early August, federal wildlife officials will begin to sort through proposals from suburban cities hoping for part of a settlement that will help bring songbirds, ducks and other flying and crawling creatures back to these areas.A $2.3 million settlement will be disbursed sometime after July 29, the last day the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will accept grant proposals for the Sharon Steel Natural Resource Damage Assessment Fund, said biologist Elise Peterson.
Officials estimate 10 tons of tailings full of lead, arsenic, cadmium and other toxic metals were dumped in and around the Jordan River in an area now known as the Sharon Steel and Midvale Slag Superfund sites. "It was stored on the banks or actu-ally dumped into the river," Peterson said.
High water carried the toxins downstream through the years, lengthening the stretch of area where plants took up the metals, and birds who live on seeds and bugs carried the poisons up the local food chain, she said.
Consequently, all local wildlife has suffered.
"The numbers dropped," Peterson said. "There are known impacts such as reproductive problems and a decreased ability
to forage. They tended to die off. There was a tremendous impact to the environment."
The settlement targets restored habitats for migratory birds, Peterson said.
Songbirds and ducks, whose varieties include warblers, sparrows, pintails and mallards, all use the area as a flyway, but many have disappeared.
The rich Jordan River Valley used to have one of the largest breeding populations of the white-faced Ibis, a shore bird, but no longer, Peterson explained.
Several suburban cities, hip-deep in a countywide effort to design parks and parkways along the river, say any amount of money will help.
In South Jordan, officials hope Sharon Steel funds will help develop a wetlands/wilds preserve on one side of the river and parks and walkways on the other, said Jodi Ketelsen, of the city's planning department.
The division should make a safer environment for wildlife and the trees, shrubs, grasses, rushes and waterways in which they live.
"Our idea is to keep humans more on the west side and wildlife on the east side."
West Jordan has successfully lobbied several state and federal funds to improve its river stretch. Officials there plan fishing piers, benches, trees, picnic tables and fields of wildflowers.
The community is behind the project: Scout groups, the Rotary Club, the Lion's Club and church groups hold tree-planting and cleanup events.
The city also has applied for Sharon Steel funds, said Wayne Harper, director of the city's community and economic development department.
West Jordan has received about $65,000 from state funds in three years.
"We could've done it without, yes, but we wouldn't be near this far along."
Farther south in the Salt Lake Valley and downstream from the Sharon Steel site, Riverton, Bluffdale and Draper have formed the Tri-City Jordan Parkway Committee and have applied for a variety of state and federal funds.
Don Davis, a Salt Lake County landscape architect who has worked closely with the Jordan River Trail project, said these communities have come a long way toward filling in development of the 33-mile stretch of river between the Great Salt Lake and Utah County.
Progress was fastest at either end of this stretch, Davis said. "I guess you could say the candle's burning from both ends."