{"id":2450254,"date":"2019-10-23T13:59:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T19:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=314868"},"modified":"2019-10-23T13:59:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T19:59:51","slug":"whitewater-park-in-eagle-draws-praise-concerns-during-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/whitewater-park-in-eagle-draws-praise-concerns-during-first-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitewater park in Eagle draws praise, concerns during first year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Ken Hoeve surfs a standing wave feature in the new whitewater park on the Eagle River in the town of Eagle. Hoeve set up a tube rental facility at the park in the summer to get non-surfers into the river. <\/strong>
Scott Cramer | Special to the Vail Daily<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

EAGLE \u2014 Amid a challenging debut, the new whitewater park in Eagle made quite a splash during its opening season in the summer of 2019.<\/p>\n

Construction on the park started over the winter of 2017-18<\/a> after Eagle taxpayers approved a sales tax increase to fund the park\u2019s creation in 2016.<\/p>\n

Before it was completed, concerns began to arise about the park.<\/p>\n

Holly Loff with the Eagle River Watershed Council said a vegetation area was needed to improve the riparian area in the park<\/a>, and a rain garden should be installed to better manage the stormwater runoff going into the river. She also said the watershed council was concerned about fish being able to pass through the river park\u2019s features.<\/p>\n

While the first two concerns have been alleviated, Loff said the group is still worried about fish passage through the area.<\/p>\n

Whitewater enthusiast Ken Hoeve spent a lot of time at the park over the summer, starting a tube rental company that saw steady business from late spring until the end of August.<\/p>\n

Hoeve said trout are a common sight in the whitewater park.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can swim upstream and jump right over these features,\u201d Hoeve said.<\/p>\n

Lesser-known species<\/h2>\n

Kendall Bakich with Colorado Parks & Wildlife said trout are the least of the wildlife experts\u2019 concerns when it comes to fish passage through the Eagle park.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially not a big trout that can jump,\u201d Bakich said. \u201cMost of the fish we\u2019re talking about are not big jumpers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to brown and rainbow trout, the Eagle River also contains sculpin, whitefish and bluehead and flannelmouth suckers.<\/p>\n

The concern is that some of the new concrete channels in the river don\u2019t have a rough enough surface to break up the water column and \u201cmake velocity slow enough for fish of all species, all sizes, to get through,\u201d Bakich said.<\/p>\n

Corps requirements<\/h2>\n

Fish passage isn\u2019t only important to agencies like the parks and wildlife division, it\u2019s also required by the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates river structures like Eagle\u2019s as part of its environmental stewardship obligations.<\/p>\n

The corps issued the town of Eagle a permit to create the whitewater park in the Eagle River, and is now awaiting the results of a hydrologic study detailing the fish activity in the new park.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe collected our data a little less than a month ago, and we are doing our analysis,\u201d Eagle town manager Brandy Reitter told the Vail Daily on Oct. 9. \u201cWe\u2019re going to put out a report by the end of the month, we have to submit that to the Army Corps, so everybody will see it, hopefully, by the end of the month. That\u2019s one of the last things that we have to do, per the Army Corps, to make sure we are complaint there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the town of Eagle is not studying the park solely based on Army Corps requirements, Reitter said. The town responded to Loff\u2019s concerns about runoff and riperian areas as soon as those concerns were presented, Reitter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were requests that were made by our community, that we\u2019re doing,\u201d Reitter said. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to the town that we listen to our constituents and are being prudent and doing what we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, Reitter added, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of great stories to come out of that park this summer. People really do love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating future advocates<\/h2>\n

One such story is that of 10-year-old Oliver Jones, who was there \u201cpretty much every day\u201d this summer, said his mother, Taleen Avedian.<\/p>\n

The family lives near the river and while they do not let Oliver and his siblings play near it during high runoff, if Oliver were to somehow find himself in the river, now, after spending so much time in the whitewater park, \u201cI think he would know what to do,\u201d Avedian said.<\/p>\n

For a parent, the amount of relief that comes with that realization is hard to describe, Avedian said.<\/p>\n

When the family moved to Eagle from Michigan four years ago, having four kids playing near a rushing river was a scary situation, no matter what protections you have in place. Avedian had never heard of a whitewater park at the time, and while she voted for it, she didn\u2019t truly understand what a whitewater park was until visiting Eagle\u2019s on opening weekend in May.<\/p>\n

While the whole family was impressed, Oliver was particularly fascinated, Avedian said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t let him go in the water while it was high, so he would just go there every day and watch the surfers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She eventually bought him a wet suit and a board after the high water receded, \u201cand he was hooked after that,\u201d Avedian said.<\/p>\n

Hoeve said Oliver quickly became one of the stars of the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cOliver and all these kids who rode their bikes here every day became better swimmers, developed a love of whitewater, that\u2019s why we built this park,\u201d Hoeve said.<\/p>\n

And in theorizing about what the future of river protection advocacy will hold, Bakich said it\u2019s people like Oliver who, thanks to parks like this one, will grow up to become the champions of river issue that the watershed will need.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the whole goal with that park, to bring people down to the river,\u201d Bakich said. \u201cPeople care about what they know, and if they\u2019re not accessing the river, they don\u2019t know the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Hoeve surfs a standing wave feature in the new whitewater park on the Eagle River in the town of Eagle. Hoeve set up a tube rental facility at the park in the summer to get non-surfers into the river. Scott Cramer | Special to the Vail Daily EAGLE \u2014 Amid a challenging debut, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 12:07:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}