Parking: Park here: N 47° 36.920 W 117° 21.785; Don't park at the school or in people's driveways.
The Hazel's Creek Drainage & Conservation Facility is a regional stormwater management project that serves a large portion of the South Hill.
The facility also serves as a demonstration site for a number of low-impact development (LID) techniques and as a passive recreation and wildlife area. The site includes detention and infiltration ponds, enhanced wetlands, and pedestrian paths, among other features.
The Hazel's Creek site is located in a natural drainageway and supports a small stream—Hazel's Creek. Water shaped this land for thousands of years. A paleochannel, an ancient creek bed buried during the Missoula floods, begins at this site. Hazel's Creek flows into that channel.
The wetland on Hazel Creek site covers about 5 acres and is part of a slightly larger system where groundwater comes to the surface. The wetlands act as a catchment basin for local stormwater, and receive water from seeps and drains located along adjoining hillsides. During large storms, runoff may overflow to the creek and then into the wetlands. The wetlands provide treatment for this runoff. Wetlands are compared to the earth's kidneys because they help control water flow and clean the water going through just like kidneys in people and other animals. Wetlands are important to water quality and stormwater runoff to:
- Help reduce flooding
- Clean contaminants from the water
- Provide critical habitat for plants and animals
The 2017 Spokane Geocache Tour brings you Sustainability of Spokane. This Geocache Tour will send geocachers on a trip through the Spokane region, finding caches in areas where Spokane residents utilize natural resources and give back to the environment. You will visit locations featuring water conservation, farming, waste treatment, forestry, and of course dam, solar and wind energy.
- All caches begin with the series name SOS: followed by a location specific name so they are easy to search. We also made a SOS Bookmark of the caches.
- Be sure to visit SpokaneGeoTour.com for more infomation on current tours and a map view of all caches in this series.
The Sustainability of Spokane Geocache Tour is sponsored by Cache Advance, and by donation from local cachers. We hope you enjoy the tour!
