Steven Schauer, External Communications Manager gave us a 3 mile tour of this project. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first portion of the tour, however I did get a chance to read the information packet Steven left with us and this is what I know. The project is a $384.5 million dollar invest by several entities including; Bexar County ($75.6 million), City of San Antonio ($76.7 million), Corps of Engineers ($141.3 million), The San Antonio River Authority and the San Antonio River Foundation ($17 million). There are essentially 4 sections, the Northern Section or the Museum Reach, the Downtown Section, the Eagleland segment and the Southern Section or Mission Reach.
The river is shut down every year for cleaning and it is drained into a flood system then pumped back in when finished cleaning. no need to worry about the fish, they have specially designed ponds for them to swim to when the are draining it. They actually planted over 20,000 young trees during the process. Recreation features include over 15 miles of hike and bike trails, 6 foot bridges, picnic tables, shade structures, overlooks and riveredge landings and paddling access points. They had to install a lock and dam system so the riverboats could come back and forth for the tourists.
The end of the river improvements is at the Pearl Brewing factory which has been redeveloped and is really cool.
Check it out.
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