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qpportunity, since the County owned a substantial portion of tha.t <br />rea.ch of the river, to develop a whitewater park for the community. <br />I first became aware of this in Ju1y af 1996 whea I had been on the <br />job for approximately 30 days when Rick came to meet w'sth me to <br />talk to me about a commitiment that my predecessor had made about <br />helping tbe, college with the whitewater pazk. The initW request <br />was, would the Coimty_ be willing to, you know, get the County <br />crews, bring some rocic down to the river and put some rock in the <br />river to develop some iriteresting features for boaters. We felt that that woutd proba.bly-be inappropriate, that there would <br />prabably be permits tha't would be requited and that we probably <br />need to have som,ebody who knows that they're douzg design such a <br />thing. And there was alsa a commitment by the Board o£ County <br />commissi6bers that we. reaUy need to have a lot of publie input, <br />whether or nat there was commuuity support for thxs. <br />During ttris timefrffine, frvm'96 to approxmately'98 -'99, we held <br />' a variety of community meetings to see what kind of snppoFt thexe <br />was on this. 'aVe had input from fihe college, in terms of their, <br />. recrea.tional needs and hoivv they fek that this program would work <br />for them And during tlais time, we bfred (3ary Lacy to be the project . <br />engineer, to Jook at tte Iocation ta see if it would wor7c as a <br />. whitewater park,, and to do a preliminary design and tallc to us about <br />funding and what kmd of permits would be required. This was atsa <br />. during the timefr=e vvheri GOCO, Great Outdoors Colorado, was <br />[winteliiAle] fuuds for development-of these kin.ds of features, <br />which unfortunately they have smce -discontmued. <br />So ttt the end of the day, on,ee the project was designed, preluniriaryr <br />design was in hand, we had a couple of public hearings to- review it <br />with the public. 'fbere was oveswhe}ming public support to continue <br />onward. A,nd the price tag was somewhere between 200 Rnd 240 <br />thousand -dollars. Both the City and the CouYrty, decided tha't they <br />would collaborate ta do a GOCO grant and appropriate the inatching <br />fimds for t]kt.. . <br />But as I said, tvvo tfiings happened during that timefiame; one was <br />GOCO ran out of money. Aad then secondly, they made a policy <br />deeision tUat they would not consider those kiads af projects. <br />Sinee we had ovr 404 permit in hand this last yeaz the Boazd of <br />County Comumissioners apptopriate $40,000 to help get started. The <br />city of Crunnisan said that they would alsa become a finamial <br />partner aad that we would invest our own ]abor in matdug this thing <br />Colorado Water Conservation Board <br />September 10, 2002 Hearing Transcript <br />Page 16