Truckee River restoration extends 10 miles

RENO — The Nature Conservancy and NV Energy are leading the latest major push to return a stretch of the lower Truckee River to a more natural state as it flows east out of Reno and Sparks toward Pyramid Lake.

The utility provided a conservation easement to help restore the latest stretch of river expected to cost about $6 million.

Mickey Hazelwood, the conservancy’s Truckee River project manager, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal it extends all the way to the Tracy power plant east of Sparks along Interstate 80. When it’s completed, it will mark mile No. 10 of the overall project.

Among other things, bulldozers will begin to cut a series of meandering bends along the river like used to exist naturally before the channel was straightened decades ago.