Article content

Edmonton has a secret downtown beach that is so spacious and lovely it should become a major attraction and a game-changer for the city.

For little cost, there could be a permanent downtown beach with a spectacular postcard view of the downtown, close to the new Valley Line LRT station on one side and to Louise McKinney Riverfront Park and the new funicular on the other.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or David Staples: Secret downtown beach can be a game-changer for Edmonton Back to video

What’s not to like?

“It’s a magnificent, clean beach,” said Paul Bunner, one of the Cloverdale residents who discovered the beach in late June and has been using it since then. “The public has to realize what we’ve got here and what we could do to make it permanent.”

The beach appeared as if out of nowhere. It came as an unintended consequence of the new Tawatina LRT bridge construction over the river.

Massive rock berms had been constructed on either side of the river to allow for the construction of the bridge’s two piers. As water resources engineer Darren Shepherd of SG1 Water Consulting Ltd. explains it, earlier this summer flow in the river was relatively high so lots of silt and sand was being transported downstream. The construction berm on the south side of the river resulted in slower-moving water and allowed the sediment carried by the water to deposit on the river bed. A large volume of sand and silt settled over roughly one-kilometre-long strip, about 25 metres wide, on the south side of the bank.