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t- T 0 <br />Designer: It can be done <br />Page 2 of 2 <br />Gary Lacy, the state's most prolific whitewater park designer and engineer who has had a hand in the development of nearly all <br />of Colorado's two dozen playparks, studied the river site and estimated he could build the park there for $400,000 to $600,000. <br />"There are some basic assumptions the Bureau of Reclamation is simply not correct on. I think they have trouble understanding <br />even the concept of a whitewater park and how they are built and how they are designed," said Lacy, who plans to meet with <br />the bureau's leaders this week to go over his line -by -line cost analysis of the park, hoping to convince them their estimates are <br />significantly inflated. "I feel very confident we have a design that can be built well within our initial budget." <br />If Lacy fails to sway the bureau, local officials and paddlers fear the retrofit would make the dam a public hazard for boaters. <br />But Price - Stubbs never has been safe for boaters, said Sue Moyer, deputy area manager for the bureau's western Colorado <br />office, noting that the bureau is not mandated to ease boat passage on a dam they are retrofitting for a fish ladder. A recent <br />bureau - installed fish ladder at a dam on the Gunnison River did not consider boater navigation, she said. <br />"I know this is a good opportunity for them. This is probably as cheap as they could ever get this park done," Moyer said. "But <br />our money is appropriated for endangered fish. A lot has changed since the 2004 assessment. Different things need to be done <br />and quantities and prices have changed significantly. It would be awful hard to get the kind of savings they are seeking I'm <br />afraid, but we are going to try to work together to get something that gets close to their ballpark." <br />http : / /www.denverpost.comlportletl article/ htmllfragmentslprint_article.jsp ?article= 4287097 9/7/2006 <br />