Pagosa Springs is in a battle with state and federal officials over water, kayaks, fish – and grout.
The San Juan River town has been fighting for a year to get a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit to expand its white-water park.
The Corps, however, is concerned about the plan’s impact on erosion and flood control.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife has also voiced opposition because the park could hurt native fish species whose numbers are dwindling.
The struggle boils down to how much cement and grout the town will use in the river to build its kayak course.
“This has gotten real sticky,” said Pagosa Springs town manager Mark Garcia.
In the new West – where recreation and eco-tourism are often pitted against wildlife and ecology – no issue is bigger than kayaking.
Paddle parks where kayakers scream through high-velocity chutes are exploding in popularity. From Durango to Golden, Salida to Steamboat Springs, there are 15 kayak parks perched on the state’s rivers, plus five more on the drawing board.
A park can bring in as much as $1.5 million annually to a mountain town starved for summer tourism, according to a study by the city of Golden.
The man-made chutes and 3-foot waterfalls are, however, barriers for native fish – like the flannelmouth sucker and roundtail chub – to migrate and spawn, say state wildlife division aquatic biologists.
“They are constructed with little thought towards what is being done to the aquatic environment,” said Sherman Hebein, senior Division of Wildlife biologist in Montrose.
The Army Corps is evaluating the impact of parks on erosion and flood hazards.
“Because the white-water parks are becoming popular and getting bigger and bigger, we have concerns about the cumulative effect,” said Kara Hellige, chief of the Durango regulatory office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Pagosa Springs, which hopes to have its new kayaking park finished late this year or early next, is an example as it seeks to expand from one to six water drops in its kayak park.
To do that, the Corps and the state wildlife division want the town to limit the amount of cement and grout it uses to link boulders and hold them in the stream bed to create drops.
Water rushes through the man-made channels at faster than 3 1/2 feet per second, too fast for even the bigger, stronger Colorado pike to swim against, said Hebein. The grout also fills in gaps between the boulders where fish hide and feed and where bugs they eat breed.
“If you’re a human, the parks are aesthetically pleasing with cascading water where you can sunbathe and soak and wade or tube,” said Mike Japhet, senior aquatic biologist for the wildlife agency in Durango.
“But if you’re a fish trying to find a way through, it’s not so good,” Japhet said.
Several native species already are declining in number, Japhet said, and Colorado River Basin states are working on plans to protect them, he said.
“No one wants to see another species listed as endangered because we ignored a fundamental aspect of their needs,” he said.
The grout also prevents the movement of sediment downstream, reducing channel capacity and increasing the flood rate, said the Corps’ Hellige.
At the same time, she said, it creates more of a flat channel upstream, reducing the slope of the river, causing it to meander and erode the banks.
As a result, the Corps says it will allow the river park only if Pagosa Springs uses minimal mortar and only at the lowest point of the streambed where the rocks are anchored to the bedrock.
While town officials fear that a kayak park without the glue to hold it together will be taken out by a flood, they say that given the importance of the park to the local economy, they will follow the Corps’ requirements.
Kayaking is the fastest-growing outdoor sport in the nation, with a 23 percent increase in participants between 2003 and 2005, according to the Boulder-based Outdoor Industry Association.
The Corps may also require the town to rebuild its original 2005 water drop using less grout.
Pagosa Springs’ park is similar to at least a dozen parks, said Gary Lacy, the project contractor, who has built most of the state’s kayak parks.
Rivers from the Animas to the Yampa have kayak parks with no ill effects, Lacy said.
Pagosa’s revival has included replacing rebar netting placed on the banks 40 years ago for erosion control with rock terrace.
“That old rusty stuff was a hazard …,” said local kayaker Anthony Doctor. “Now people are hanging out, watching the kayakers, enjoying the river. … It’s changed the whole environment.”
Staff writer Dave Curtin can be reached at 303-820-1276 or dcurtin@denverpost.com.
