Google Search: jordan river utah : "Anyway, the thread on unique river hazards made me think of the time some friends and I tried to paddle the

Jordan River from its source in Utah Lake to the first major obstacle in the Jordan River Narrows in the south

end of the Salt Lake valley. I know the Jordan used to be a beautiful little stream, tree lined, home to

birds and fish and all sorts of nice clean critters. I know 'cause I'm an archivist and see photographs and

read accounts of what it used to be like. Well now its source, Utah Lake, is full of heavy metals from fifty

years of steel production and 100 years of agricultural chemicals and 150 years of sewage from Ovum, I mean

Orem, and Provo, Utah. The river as it goes through the Salt Lake valley has been a dumping ground for a

century and a half, and now instead of trees it has bridge abutments and old rebar, instead of nice fish it

has big greasy mutated carp that feed on offal from the meat packing plant, dead animals that people throw in

it, and the occasional poor transient who drinks too much thunderbird, falls in the river and dies. Ah, parts

of it are still pretty, but just when you think it's pretty nice you come around a corner and face a rapid

made entirely of shopping carts that hooligans have thrown in the river, or a bunch of kids giving you gang

signs and holding cans of spray paint. Just glad it wasn't guns."