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Page 1 of 2 >O Close Window Send To Printer Article Last Updated: 9/04/2006 09:59 PM Water park may dry up By Jason Blevins Denver Post Staff Writer DenverPost.com An eight -year plan to build a year -round whitewater park adjacent to a proposed fish ladder on the Colorado River near Palisade is crumbling after recent federal cost estimates more than quadrupled. The Bureau of Reclamation, which is soliciting bids to install a fish passage for endangered species at the defunct Price - Stubbs Dam, recently estimated the cost of piggybacking four whitewater park drops to the dam restructuring is somewhere around $3 million, not the $400,000 to $600,000 originally planned. A group of Western Slope kayakers and the town of Palisade have spent more than eight years designing and planning the whitewater park. They have gathered $650,000 from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, Great Outdoors Colorado and dozens of Western Slope businesses and individual donors eager to reap the tourist - related benefits that would accompany one of the state's biggest playparks. "Now they tell us we need to raise another $2.5 million or so in the next two months," said Pete Winn, a local paddler who has spearheaded the grassroots effort from its inception in 1998, raising money as well as convincing local irrigation companies, the Town of Palisade and several other groups that the playpark would be a boon for the region. "Now all the sudden, after all this time, the bureau is not being at all cooperative. I feel like I've been stabbed in the back." The tenuous coalition supporting the park is unraveling with the increased price. It is doubtful the group, led by Palisade officials, can raise another $2.5 million by November, when the Bureau of Reclamation plans to select a contractor and begin work on the fish ladder at the decrepit dam. The spirited park effort involved enlisting the support of local irrigation companies downstream, the Bureau of Reclamation, local governments and even the Union Pacific railroad, which granted a rare easement to allow access to the proposed park. Palisade not giving up The plan was born in the late 1990s when the Bureau of Reclamation first proposed changes to the 103 - year -old dam, which impedes the upriver migration of two endangered species: the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker. When the bureau proposed a fish ladder, local whitewater paddlers saw a window of opportunity. It was a once -in -a- lifetime chance to build a whitewater park when the river was diverted to build the fish ladder. And not just any park. Last week the Colorado River at the site east of Palisade was running at 2,600 cubic feet per second, making it one of the few spots in the state with late - season water for whitewater paddlers. With four big drops, the proposed park would be the biggest in the state at peak flows and the only park navigable in the offseason. Local paddlers saw the federal spending as a way to accomplish multiple goals beyond protecting endangered species. They could eliminate an existing hazard at the unnavigable and deadly dam, create some local whitewater play opportunities and harvest some tourist dollars for local communities by creating an attraction. "If we don't do this right now, there will be many years of regret," said Tim Sarmo, manager for the Town of Palisade. "I'm not giving up yet. The bureau has agreed to go back to the table with our engineers and see if we can't find some cost savings. But we have to acknowledge that if we tried every possible angle and used creative minds and ultimately the cost increment is too high, we have to acknowledge at least it was a great effort." The bureau pointed toward a fish ladder and playpark in its 2004 Environmental Assessment as the "preferred alternative," noting it would only work if the paddlers and local communities covered the additional cost of $400,000 or more for the park. The federal money was for endangered species, not whitewater recreation. http : / /www.denverpost.comlportlet /article /html /fragments /print article.jsp ?article= 4287097 9/7/2006