Volunteers clean up Phoenix’s Tres Rios Wetlands to benefit wildlife, community

PHOENIX — Volunteers filled up an entire dumpster with trash following a cleanup operation at the Tres Rios Wetlands earlier this month.

The cleanup happens every April to coincide with Earth Month. It helps the city of Phoenix maintain the human-made riparian ecosystem and keep it clean for wildlife and the public to enjoy.

The annual effort is part of Rio Reimagined, a regional planning initiative that aims to revitalize a 55-mile corridor along the Salt and Gila rivers from Mesa to Buckeye.

Tres Rios Wetlands is a 750-acre site near 91st Avenue and Broadway Road, just north of the Salt River bed. It includes 300 acres open to the public for recreation.

Water treated at the neighboring 91st Avenue Water Reclamation Plant is fed into the wetlands before it’s discharged into the Salt River.

Volunteer effort targets trash, invasive plant at Tres Rios Wetlands

Illegal dumping has been a problem at Tres Rios, according to Nazario Prieto, assistant water services director for the city of Phoenix.

“Some of the people, they come and they walk it, they hike it. They hike that trail or they come fishing and sometimes they just leave their trash,” Prieto told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

In addition to picking up trash, approximately 150 volunteers worked to remove an invasive plant called stinknet during the April 11 cleanup event.

The city wants to eradicate stinknet, a weed that grows in dense clusters and displaces native vegetation.

The cleanup isn’t just to keep Tres Rios Wetlands looking beautiful for the community to enjoy, but to protect the wildlife habitat and water quality.

“We want to make sure that they [animals] don’t accidentally eat some of this trash, or it doesn’t contaminate the water that they’re swimming in, that they’re living in, [or] … the fish that they’re feeding off of,” Prieto said.

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