SOUTH JORDAN — In the wake of anger over South Jordan's bulldozing of a section of a river-bottoms revitalization project, the city is saying its critics got it wrong.
In a letter to the Utah Reclamation Mitigation & Conservation Commission and several media outlets this week, city manager Ricky Horst wrote that "South Jordan city has been the victim of a very negative campaign to impugn our reputation as a custodian of open space and protector of the environment."
Late last month, a group of volunteers working on replanting a section of the Jordan River bottoms in South Jordan showed up to find that a 25-foot swath of their tree-planting project had been bulldozed by city workers installing a culinary water line.
Upset, those volunteers, working with TreeUtah under a contract between the city and the URMCC, contacted the media.
Vaughn Lovejoy, an ecological-restoration coordinator for TreeUtah, told the Deseret Morning News at the time that the project coordinators had been having trouble communicating with city officials, and the result was that the city plowed through 7-year-old golden currants that were just starting to take hold.
He said the planters had left an unplanted section for the city to bury its water line.
City attorney John Geilmann characterized the incident as a mistake on the city's part, a case of miscommunication.
But Horst's letter, sent almost three weeks after the story first broke, says the city was well within its conservation agreement with URMCC and that it had been in communication with project planners, alerting them to the city's plans to bury the line.
The project is taking place on land between 9800 South and 11100 South owned by the city. URMCC has a 31.4-acre conservation easement through the approximately 208-acre project area.
Horst's letter says the city's "core mission is to provide for the public health and safety of its citizens," and the provision of water sources to residents is among the key elements of that mission. It emphasized that the city plans "remediation" to undo the damage done by the bulldozing. It says the water-line project impacted only 0.29 percent of the entire tree-planting project.
The letter touts the city's environmental programs and its work in the past to protect the Jordan River corridor. It values the land, easement and right of way it has provided in support of the URMCC project at $313,271. It says the city has been responsible for the planting of more than 10,000 trees within the city limits since the start of 2000.
The URMCC project is an effort to restore the natural habitat along parts of the Jordan River. The golden currants were planted to provide berries and draw insects for migratory birds and shelter for less-hardy native trees.
Assistant city manager Rob Wall told the Deseret Morning News on Wednesday that the city has been working on its plans to remediate the area and has been meeting with URMCC representatives.
"Our project manager and our operations manager who met with them told them the city would be back to them with a plan, which we are developing pursuant to the conservation easement," he said. He said he believes there is no ill will between the city and the URMCC as a result of the bulldozing and most of the controversy has come from TreeUtah and the media.
Calls to the URMCC for comment were not returned Wednesday.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com