Preparation efforts toward cleaning Portneuf River

The Portneuf River, snakes through the center of town, but people don’t swim in it. Driving down north Main street, you can see trash, plastic bottles, bags and old boxes. A cleanup job that Pocatello sanitation can’t do on their own.

Tom Kirkman, Deputy Public Works Director, says, “anytime you have open spaces, public areas, there’s going to be deposits of trash. We like to encourage people to be good stewards of the environment and find a responsible place to get rid of those trash.”

However, the trash isn’t always dumped into the river. Sometimes, they can travel through street runoffs and travel through underground pipes. “So our street department is very instrumental in the cleanup of the river as well as all of the inlets and the pipes that go towards the river.”

Hannah Sanger, Science and Environment Administer for Pocatello, said, “plastic bags, plastic bottles, and little lighter that can fall into the storm drain, a lot of that is coming off of our city streets.”

For over 10 years now, Hannah Sanger has organized an annual community cleanup of the river. This is where volunteers from the community help clear trash and debris from the river.

It all goes towards, “helping to make the Portneuf a swim-mable, floatable, river and we’re on our way to getting there.”

They have made some progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done. This year, they have several independent contractors that will help clear some of the larger debris along the river.

This year, we’re making a concerted effort, we’re also working with some contractors who are providing there time to use some heavy equipment to pull out our bigger debris dams so we really can have a floatable river.

They hope the Portneuf river will once again, be safe and swim-mable river for the community to enjoy.