Tours:

This year the conference is offering two tour options; Cutler Marsh or Northern Cache Valley. Both tours will last about 6 hours from 8:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Lunch and drinks will be provided. Please sign up for your tour choice when you register. There is limited space on the tours; please register as soon as possible to ensure you are assigned the tour of your preference.

Please remember to bring sunscreen, water bottles, hats, bug spray, and binoculars.

Cutler Marsh Tour: This tour will meet at USU at 8:45 a.m. to explore the Cutler Marsh area, where the Bear River meets several major tributaries and a large wetland spreads out over the valley floor. The tour will be divided into two groups which will switch when they meet again for lunch at a picnic area near the marsh. One group will travel by bus to several sites near the marsh and the other group will tour the marsh by boat.

The bus tour will visit Logan City's municipal treatment lagoons and their treatment wetlands which remove ammonia from effluent that enters the marsh. Time allowing, they will also visit an automated water quality monitoring site on the Little Bear River.

The boat tour will again split into two groups. These smaller groups will spend part of their time exploring Cutler Marsh by motor boat and part of their time paddling through the wetlands by canoe, and will switch after about an hour. The motor boats will travel into Cutler Marsh to view bank stabilization and other restoration efforts in the marsh. The canoe group will paddle along a wetland trail with birding experts exploring marsh wildlife.

The tour will return to USU around 3:00 p.m.

Northern Cache Valley Tour: This tour will leave USU at 8:45 a.m. and will visit several sites in northern Utah and southern Idaho. Informative guides will travel with each bus to describe the area and projects along the way.

As the tour heads north, there will be stops at a river restoration site and a fish diversion structure designed to protect cutthroat trout populations. Near Grace, Idaho, the group will visit the decommissioned Cove Dam and have lunch near Black Canyon. After lunch the tour will travel to Last Chance Canal for a presentation on the automated collection of real time flow data.

Time allowing, the group will also explore the historic Last Chance Canal diversions and aqueducts, and will hear a brief presentation on managing groundwater in this area, where the surface water drains to the Bear River, but the groundwater is part of the Portneuf River system. Tour topics will also include wastewater treatment plant discharge, non-point pollution sources and pollution trading.

The tour will return to USU around 3:00 p.m.