I went to the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area today for the first time. My first reaction when I arrived was that it's a really cool place. I parked at the Central Ave hub and started my walk on the path that leads toward 7th St/16th St.
The place has a ton of potential. As others have said though, there is a fair amount of trash. It's odd because on my walk a person in a Phoenix Parks and Recreation truck drove past me no less than 4 times driving back and forth on the trail, I'm assuming from the Central hub to 16th street and back. It made me wonder exactly what his job entailed... it's certainly not to keep the park clean...
Anyway, rather than just come here and complain on Yelp about how much trash there was, I grabbed a plastic bag and started picking up trash along my walk. There were plenty of random plastic bags hanging on shrubs to choose from. I actually ended up filling 3 before the end of my walk and could have easily continued, but I was starting to look like a transient carrying all those bags of trash.
Rio Salado is definitely worth visiting. It's a great place to bring kids to educate them about nature and their environmental surroundings, and also a great place to teach them about litter... and how LITTERING IS BAD. Because there are obviously a lot of people out there who were never taught that lesson.