What one urban creek taught me about conservation in our cities

Dillan Saltsman (he/him)
Hometown: Ripon, CA
Major: Environmental Systems, ‘27
Internship: American Rivers

Dillan Saltsman explores the possibilities of creek restoration in under-resourced urban Sacramento with the nonprofit American Rivers.

I am grateful to have joined American Rivers as an Urban Stream Revitalization intern for the summer 2025. Through this experience, I have had the opportunity to engage meaningfully with community outreach, develop the project’s funding and financing memo, apply my understanding of water infrastructure, and hear the perspectives of accomplished colleagues across disciplines. This internship is my very first experience with the nonprofit sector, and has shaped my perception of this sector. It has also reconnected me with parts of California that I grew up in.

One of my most memorable moments of the internship was my field visit to Morrison Creek with my supervisor, Kristan Culbert. As we drove through a housing development to reach upper Morrison Creek, we observed animal and insect activity present in the ample clearing on each side of the creek channel. Upper Morrison Creek looks very different from lower Morrison Creek, the focus of my summer project, in south Sacramento. Here, it is difficult to see the creek until you get up close and look beyond trash caught in the creek. While walking around, the only sounds were those of passing trucks and cars over a busy bridge, and the steep banks showed visibly clear signs of erosion from the constrained waterflow.

For decades, historical redlining practices discouraged public investment in south Sacramento and elsewhere across the Sacramento region. Water has shaped this place for a very long time, yet gates keep community members from accessing a creek that they see from their own backyards. Touring upper Morrison Creek helped me see what lower Morrison Creek could look like someday and gave my internship purpose.

The Sacramento Urban Creeks project, a partnership between American Rivers and the Sacramento Community Land Trust, aims to increase the number of creek restoration and green infrastructure projects across Sacramento County, by building out a toolkit and framework for use by other agencies and organizations. On this site in particular, I have helped craft the curriculum and messaging around a Community Action Training, which will be used to understand the needs, priorities, and perception of urban creek restoration work in south Sacramento. Using GIS mapping, I collected existing databases into a community map that highlighted some of the pre-assessed concerns. Then from this door-to-door outreach and direct community engagement, it was eye-opening to realize how a creek restoration project could be not only generally beneficial, but could also be shaped to be more closely aligned with community needs, such as food access, safety and transit, and housing insecurity. The Community Action Training program also challenges conventional research by following a Participatory Action Research model, which trains community members to be the most effective surveyors of their friends, families, and neighbors with the tools they can carry forward. It feels right to be contributing toward a project that centers the community as the owner of its own research.

Collaboration is an especially key component of the work that non-profits do to maximize their impact. The deliverables of this project focus on creating resources that outline how partners can get involved. One of these deliverables, which is my second area of focus this summer, has been to build out a Funding and Financing Memo. This memo helps meet potential partners at every stage of their project, from proposal to long-term maintenance, with the tools and options to plan for its financial future. Securing funding means connecting with grant-makers and organizations who align with the project’s goals, in an effort to redirect these investments into the most under-resourced places. My third area of focus has been building out the interested parties list, a database of agencies, non-profits, tribes, and community-based organizations who could contribute to, support, and have a key voice in these types of projects.

I appreciated meeting with American Rivers staff and learning about what they do. It has been helpful to hear their perspectives on what to expect while working for a nonprofit organization, and how their career paths led them in unexpected directions. Working at American Rivers feels dynamic and ever-changing, especially in the current political landscape. Also, contributing to other projects across the Central Valley region and joining staff meetings across the organization has offered me new ways of thinking about water-related challenges in the West.

Creeks can, and should, be the string that ties communities together. As the flowers bloom and the grasses grow, so do the people who have their concerns addressed regarding housing, transportation and mobility, health, climate resiliency, food security, and more. Being on the ground and able to hear community members talk about their experience grounds me in the ideas that built systems should be informed by the people who interact with them. I seek to be a well-rounded engineer so I can understand the contexts in which these systems operate and create projects responsibly, which are truly responsive to the needs of time, place, and the future.