BOARD01883

• Board Meeting Date: 7/28/2003
• Description: Flood Section - Request for Approval of Policy Regarding RICD's
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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Summary Of Selected Technical Reauirements For Artificial Whitewater Courses

The following technical requirements are typically accepted technical requirements used
in evaluation and design of Artificial Whitewater Courses:

· Head: minimum for an international level site is 3.5 m (11.5 ft.). A head of just
1.5 m (5 ft.) is adequate for a site of "local merit."
· Discharge: Minimum flow for an international quality site is 10 m3/sec. (350 cfs).
Flow as low as 2 m3/sec. (70 cfs) is adequate for a site of local merit. There is a
relationship between discharge and the amount of fall available at a site. The
lower the fall the more discharge is needed to make a world-class course.
. Water velocity: 2m/see (6.6 ft./sec)
· Water depth: 0.15m (6") is minimum to float a boat, but in order to take paddle
strokes, 0.5m (20") depth is needed. To safely perform an Eskimo role, 0.8 to 1.0
m (3' to 3.3') is required.
· Minimum average width is 5 m (16.5 ft.). This allows a 2-person canoe to turn
sideways. The general width should be 10 m (33 ft.). The minimum passable width
of 1.2 m (4 ft.) is possible provided that is a local constriction and not very long,
however debris issues may preclude this narrow of a width.
· Minimum length is 400m (1300 ft.) for international whitewater slalom races, or
1,000 ft for most other courses.

The minimum head (3.5 m).is driven by the need to provide continuous rapids throughout
of the length of the whitewater slalom event at the time (400 m). A high quality play
boat and rodeo competition site can be done with much less head provided that there is
available discharge in the range as suggested below as the RSFR. At the time of this
report, international whitewater rodeo did not exist; hence they could provide no
guidance on requirements.

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