CONTRACTOR OFFERS TO BUILD ROCKPORT WAVE AT LOW COST !!!

[CAPTAIN ALEVE]

A contractor with experience placing large stones in rivers has offered his services to build the Lower Ledge Wave at Malvern at a very reasonable rate. He will provide two trackhoes, fuel, and operators and work 40 hours a week for the price of $15,000 per week. Unfortunately, he assumed our design was similar to other projects where large stones are positioned securely in rivers. If our project had been designed without using concrete around the stones (which forces the contractor to build dams around the work site so the area can be pumped dry), it looks like the project would cost much less than the $138,000 that Malvern and the ACC have in the bank for the project.

Right now the plans call for using concrete grout around boulders. Those plans and a cost estimate are expected to be delivered very soon. If the cost supplied is more than we can afford, I hope that the ACC will consider reverting to the plan that was envisioned in February 2008 when Malvern, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and the ACC reached an agreement which I quote below:

Plan to Move Forward
• AGFC has agreed to provide technical support and assistance. They have a professional engineer who can provide design assistance and PE approval of design documents. They will also assist with contract bid documents and provide names and contacts of proven contractors.

• Steve Filipek will contact Mr. Terry Ferris who was described as an artist with a track hoe in placing large boulders in rivers. We will see if Mr. Ferris would agree to come and view the site, discuss with us what we will want to build and give us a rough estimate of the cost to construct it. This will be very useful for grant applications and other funding requests.

• Lance Jones and the Arkansas Canoe Club will inquire with Recreation Engineering Planners to determine if they are interested in the redesign of the project without the use of structural grout. If not, the ACC will locate another whitewater recreation design firm for us to work with. Lance has already made contact with one such firm. Once the ACC selects a whitewater design firm, a meeting will be set up for them to come to the site and meet with everyone to discuss details. If all goes well, the AGFC engineer can work with the WW designer and develop a set of drawings and specifications suitable to bid the project.

• All construction bid documents will be reviewed by the City of Malvern Attorney and Mayor and once found acceptable, bidding and construction contracting will be performed by the City. Details on whom and how construction oversight will be conducted has yet to be worked out.


The meeting concluded with some very positive and encouraging comments by Mayor Steve Northcutt. All who attended left encouraged that this project can be done and that we now have a viable plan with which to move forward.
End quote.

Somehow that plan to move forward ended up going back to a design using concrete around the rocks. Lots of whitewater parks have been built without concrete grout so why can’t ours?

Mike Coogan, alias Captain Aleve

[Heath]

ok, I have kept my mouth shut on this hole subject, but this is just wrong.

I understand that mr. coogan feels that the ball has been dropped on this project, (many others) feel the same way.

As someone who has been involved in wave building, I would think that any one in there wright mind could see that the project at rockport would need to be grouted, in order to truly stay in place, and not end up being a waste of a lot of money. Rockport is subject to major flows,(20k+) cfs is not that uncommon there. We have seen what a mere 1000cfs has moved at dierks, and come to think of it I dont remember seeing any rocks that big at rockport

i want to see rockport finished as much as anyone, I would love to be able to be a part of the building as well,but I am not comeing on the board and stirring the pot just because my feelings got hurt somewhere along the way.

if this contractor is truly interested, then I think he would be just as interested even using the groute. Yes it is going to cost more money, (the first time around) but in the long run it will be a better overall outcome.

Mr. coogan, I mean no disrespect with my post, after all the squeeky wheel is the one that gets oiled.

[okieboater]

I don't have a dog in this fight except that as a boater I would love to see Rockport be all that it can be.

I can state from personal experience at the various attempts to recreate the Tulsa Wave that I have seen 12,000 cfs move rocks the size of volkswagen sedans up to maybe a Jeep CJ5 until we stacked them three deep and then over time, multiple 12,000 cfs releases blew them out where ever the flowing water found a weak spot.

I do not know just how to do it but some sort of mechanical fasteners like steel pipe rods was suggested. Drilled into bed rock and then set the pipe into the bottoms of the big rocks. We also discussed blasting out trenches to set the big rocks into. The cost to do the fastening blew our budget and we never got er done.

For what it is worth.......

[Jim Krueger]

"I don't have a dog in this fight either" because I primarily have always just enjoyed the whole section floating through, with limited play. The river would suit me fine, as-is, without any more modification. However, a large part of what I enjoy in the Rockport portion of the float has to be seeing all my 'surfing/playing' friends to whom this all IS a big deal. I just hope any modifications will be done to suit everyone's preferences, both for teaching venues, and for just good surfing spots.

Recently my companions were floating the Little Missouri R. below the Narrows Dam near Murfreesboro. I was to meet them at the take-out later but first drove in to weir#3 at The Old Factory Site to sit in the water& drink a beer. The ARG&F built this stacked rock weir, and several others on this stretch, some years ago. On this day, I arrived before the water came and observed how the weir has had very little erosion considering massive releases over the years, and length of time in service so far. I'm fairly sure it's all just placed rock with no concrete.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the Ledge after 'every' float down from the dam. Just keep that Cowper guy from darting out in front of us at the last moment.


Best Regards
Jim

[okieboater]

Jim's comments prove to me that the old saying "It depends" applies to placing rocks in rivers as well as it does to a lot of other things.

I wish good luck to all of you working on the Rockport Project.

Dave

[Fish]

OK, my dog is a lover not a fighter. I think Rockport is pretty darn great like it is right now at a cost of near zero. Wish I had something even halfway as good an hour or so from my house! However, I can understand the urge to channel down the water and make a better wave at higher flows and a wave at lower flows. New rock in the riverbed is going to get pushed around. That's not to say it can't be eventually arranged to settle into a fairly flood-resistant configuration, but that's probably more art than science - it's a very complex problem to solve. When very high water comes, places (banks, etc.) that have not eroded historically will erode, "natural" rocks will move, etc. The "equilibrium" that the riverbed has more-or-less reached over thousands of years will have been changed. I would expect any attempt to create a feature using loose rock to have to be "tuned" repeatedly over time. So the "lifecycle" cost of placing rocks without grout or other ways of securing them into place might well be more than for spending the money upfront on the grout. That might be extended to making sure the banks don't experience accelerated erosion, etc. due to the alteration of the riverbed, since a flood doesn't have to directly move the human-placed rocks around to cause the play features to shift.

Like I said, It's not an easy problem to solve. Just some thoughts from a fight-less dog.

- Fish

[Clif]

is this tanner street area or the main ledge?

signed,
dogless

[Wildwood]

Clif,
yer dawg is laying on my front porch watching the deer in my yard. :roll: I wondered who cut his collar off & dumped him a couple of months ago.
Oh, he runs from cats, too.
I guess yer dawg won't hunt - or fight.
Jan

[Half Ton]

Sounds like a waste of cash to me not to leave as is and to try make it better according human standards....course It's human nature not to leave well enough alone a naturally occurring feature that has historic values as well. Heck after it's fully modified it still is not going to be ideal. seems like fuzzy math to me that somehow more people will come to town and spend cash than they do now because of the geologic improvement at rockport ledge stuff (girls). Whatever floats the boat better. Jp

[CAPTAIN ALEVE]

I’m going to back off on this issue, but discussing ACC projects openly and getting information out to all members is a good thing. All comments on projects should be welcome. This is the most expensive thing the ACC has been involved in and our members should be getting regular updates on how their donations to the project are being used.

The ACC subcommittee of three people has chosen an approach to this project; let’s throw our support behind them and see how things turn out. But let’s ask them to report to us on a quarterly basis, here on the message board, let's ask them to:

1. Tell us the status of the plans
2. Publish the plans at each stage of completion
3. Name our fund raising goal
4. List what grants were applied for in the past three months
5. List what organizations the project got endorsements from in the last three months
6. Update our fundraising progress toward the total goal
7. List who is working on the project and ask for volunteers as necessary

Shouldn't take ten minutes to supply the above information. Did I leave anything out?

Captain Aleve, alias Mike Coogan

[jmdauf]

CONTRACTOR OFFERS TO BUILD ROCKPORT WAVE AT LOW COST!!
This IS GREAT NEWS, especially if it can be done with AGFC assistance & no (or minimal) grout. Sure it will take some tweeking, but change is good and BIG rocks at Tanner can be stable (the diagonal center hole and its upstream surf rocks and well as the large center eddy rock did not move during the flood of 1990, even though the bridge was moved - washed away - and the eddy rock is gone, removed for the new bridge). Doing something would be better than doing nothing (or if something is being done, PLEASE let us know, on a regular basis.)
more two cents,
Mitch

[Fish]

Doing something would be better than doing nothing.

I deg to biffer, but I've seen the "doing something" route go pretty badly astray before. The problem is that doing something without a very good idea of how the river will change in the next flood can easily result in a worse playspot than before. Some well-meaning paddlers decided to shift a few large rocks around on one of my favorite play runs several years ago to "improve" a rapid. The next major flood noticed those big rocks were in a different spot and promptly rolled them around, washed out the channel widening it significantly, rearranged the pool and the next rapid downstream covering up most of the old hole, etc. The take away lesson is that some guys just going out and doing something that they think makes sense is pretty much a crap shoot when the next flood hits.

Notice that I'm not in the dogmatic don't-modify-a-streambed-for-any-reason crowd. But I would caution that if you already have a good rapid (as is the case with Rockport) you either plan carefully and do it right or just let nature do her thing. The middle ground is fraught with peril! (I've just always wanted to use that phrase.) If there's no rapid to play there at all then piling rocks into the streambed can't hurt your chances of having a good playspot. When you start at zero, you only go up! But if you have a spot people already like to surf, there may well be more ways to screw it up than to make it better, and it's VERY hard to tell the difference, despite the fact that pretty much every boater you'll talk to thinks they know exactly how to improve it!

- Fish

[jmdauf]

Sorry,
I thought this discussion was about the Rockport wave at Tanner Street - the lower ledge project. There is not an easily surfed rapid (now that the new bridge removed the large center eddy rock, the one left from the 100 yr. 1990 flood event) at that location.
Never-mind, Mitch