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Clean and Healthy Water

Why do We do What We do?

Escondido Creek in the City of Escondido can be a bleak and depressing sight. The channel is often scarred by trash of all types, including broken glass and shopping carts. Oil sheens are observed on the waters’ surface. It seems a forgotten area without hope.

 

Amazingly, and perhaps not the healthiest for them, the channel is still used by wildlife, which do not understand the water is not clean. On a bike ride along the creek trail, executive director Ann Van Leer and her family encountered a red-tailed hawk taking a bath in the channel.  Surprising but hopeful.

 

While we advocate for clean water for people, we also advocate for the wildlife that live their lives in the Escondido Creek watershed and need clean water to thrive.

 

The City of Escondido is making some progress on creek enhancements, but a lot of the city’s efforts are focused on cosmetic improvements, like the Escondido Creek Trail enhancements that, while welcomed, are not enough. We must, as a community, advocate for broad and measurable improvements to the quality of the water in the creek. The city must eliminate trash and other pollutants from entering the channel, to reduce pollution in the creek and the ocean.
 

Please contact us at information@escondidcreek.org tp get involved.​​

 Escondido Creek in the City of Escondido can be a bleak and depressing sight. The channel is often scarred by trash of all types, including broken glass and shopping carts. Oil sheens are observed on the waters’ surface. It seems a forgotten area without hope. Without clean and free flowing water in the creek and its tributaries, the Escondido Creek watershed will never fulfill its potential to support the natural diversity of species that make our region unique.

WATER QUALITY MONITERING

Beginning in September, 2011, the Conservancy began conducting routine water quality monitoring at four sites along the Escondido Creek. The purpose of the Water Quality Monitoring Program is to establish a baseline that will be used to evaluate the condition and overall health of Escondido Creek on an ongoing basis, as well as to identify short- and long-term trends.

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Many of these water quality parameters have improved since monitoring began, but there is still much more work to be done. The natural creek (as opposed to the concrete flood control channel in downtown Escondido) acts as a biofilter, removing pollutants from the creek as it progresses toward the ocean. One of the Conservancy’s long-term goals is to re-naturalize this concrete channel in order to provide greater benefits to both people and wildlife.

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THE CITY OF ESCONDIDO

For decades, Escondido's residents have called on the city to restore the storm drain channel along Escondido Creek such that the creek becomes more natural and is an amenity, a linear park, for city residents, and the water flowing through the creek is clean, all the way to the San Elijo lagoon where the creek meets the Pacific ocean. 

Some progress has occurred:

Revealing Escondido Creek

 

Residents began to be heard when landscape architectural students at Cal Poly Pomona helped advance the dream with a community-based project that resulted in a report called "Revealing Escondido Creek." It outlines a future in which the Escondido Creek Trail along the storm drain channel revitalizes Escondido and becomes a linear creek-walk park providing residents and visitors with an opportunity to engage the creek in both its wild and urban typologies.

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2012 - Escondido Creek Trail Master Plan

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There is the Escondido Creek flood channel, which confines the waters of Escondido Creek as it moves through the City of Escondido, and alongside the flood control channel is a maintenance road the City calls the Escondido Creek Trail.  To help advance improvements to the Escondido Creek Trail, the city commissioned Schmidt Design group to develop a plan that would guide development along the trail. The resultant plan helps set standards as people develop projects along the trail, for things such as fencing and lighting. 

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2020 Escondido Creek Trail Improvement Grant

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The Conservancy was pleased to support the City of Escondido’s successful $8.5 million grant to make improvements to the Escondido Creek Trail. In 2020, the city was awarded $8.5 million from the CA Department of Parks and Recreation through the Prop 68 Parks and Water Bond Act of 2018, which aims to create new parks and recreation opportunities in underserved communities across California. The current Escondido Creek Trail Expansion and Renovation project would improve approximately 4.5 miles of the existing Escondido Creek Trail and add approximately 0.4 miles of new bicycle path. This project will create a double-sided trail on approximately 1.7 miles; on one side will be the existing Class I bicycle path, on the other will be a new DG trail. While the city’s approach wasn't as bold as the Conservancy would have hoped, once constructed, it will dramatically improve the visual feel of the Creek Trail. Work should start in 2025.

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FURTHER READING

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