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The Pueblo Chieftain Online <br />Published: Monday February 07, 2005 <br />Construction is nearly complete on <br />the Arkansas River kayak course, <br />seen here looking north from the river <br />trail near the Union Avenue Bridge. <br />Kayak course looks swell <br />Beware: Finish of building seen by Ides of March <br />By MARGIE WOOD <br />THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN <br />Page 1 of 2 <br />Pueblo's long- awaited kayak course is rising in the Arkansas River, and should be <br />completed by March 15. <br />The eight pools of the course are visible in the water now, and even the low - <br />flowing water of winter manages to make modest whitecaps over the Aquila power <br />plant's diversion dam just downstream from the West Fourth Street Bridge. <br />City planner Scott Hobson said eight "drop structures" of the kayak course are <br />completed on the side against the levee, and now the river will be diverted to that <br />side to enable workers to finish the other side of the pools. <br />"They have to be done with that work by March 15, when winter storage ends, and <br />then we'll be landscaping the vegetated bars up against the levee," Hobson said. <br />Those bars will be terraces, stabilized by rock held in place by a fabric cover, then <br />landscaped with native plants. <br />The kayak course doubles as a fish ladder and habitat improvement, and it's only <br />the most visible part of 9 miles of river restoration work in the $8.8 million job <br />called the Arkansas River Corridor Legacy Project. <br />There are 15 W- or V- shaped weirs in the riverbed, each creating a small pool on <br />the downstream side, and 57 sets of four boulders that interrupt the streamflow <br />http: / /www. chieftain. com /print.php ?article= /Metro/1107790687/1 2/7/2005 <br />CHIEFTAIN PHOTO /MIKE SWEENEY <br />