Click the link to read the article on the Steamboat Pilot & Today website (Suzie Romig). Here’s an excerpt:
Residents and river lovers may have noticed weeks of river cleanup and streambank restoration work that took place this fall along the Yampa River in south Steamboat Springs at the site of a former concrete batch plant of decades past. For about five weeks this fall, workers removed dozens of dump truck loads of concrete, rebar, debris and an old concrete truck, said Mitch Clark, owner of Snow County Nursery, who purchased the 10-acre site located off Dougherty Road just south of the current southern end of the Yampa River Core Trail. Heavy machinery could be seen in the river this fall moving huge boulders…
Clark purchased the land on either side of the Yampa River adjacent to his existing nursery, garden center and landscape company. The business owner received a floodplain development permit to clean up the river bank, stabilize the bank, prevent erosion, increase sediment transport and provide habitat, according to Alan Goldich with Routt County Planning. The river work was designed by Landmark Consultants in Steamboat..
“The floodplain permit does allow for that type of activity, and he did receive an Army Corps permit as well,” Goldich noted.
Clark received significant grant support for the restoration project through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services EQIP program, or Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers, said Vance Fulton, NRCS engineering tech in Steamboat…Fulton said the Yampa River through the property was too wide and too shallow, so material was being deposited in that section of the river during high water runoff in the spring.