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November 21, 2024

Alamosa is continuing to piece together its Rio Grande recreation puzzle. With support from the city of Alamosa to pull back the levee to make way for a beach, the Alamosa Riverfront Project is taking a different shape. Support from the city will aid in helping bring the project to completion. 

During a city council meeting earlier in November, councilors recognized that the project aids in the city’s “Activating the Rio Grande Corridor,” a top priority for the Parks and Recreation Department. 

As the river’s oxbow loops lazily trickle ever southward to the Gulf of Mexico, deciphering how to ensure people can access the river, how the river can maintain its natural biodiversity, and how to prevent thousands from losing their homes in a “100-year” flood make it a daunting and sharp puzzle. 

The Alamosa Riverfront Project is looking to expand recreation access and improve river restoration from the State Avenue Bridge, upstream of Alamosa’s Cole Park, to the West Side Ditch, downstream of Cole Park. It’s a multi-million dollar project that, so far, has received overwhelming support from the community, according to project planners and members of the community who showed up at a series of summer community meetings.  

You may be able to take the town from the river, but the river will continue to flow through town. 

The project is looking to connect people back to the Rio Grande, not through adrenaline-pumping white water, but instead by leveraging its natural geographic limitations.

Brian Puccerella, San Luis Valley Great Outdoor’s outdoor recreation manager, has been involved in this project since about 2016. That’s when the conversation about expanding access to paddlers, maybe adding a play wave, and just expanding recreation generally started making the rounds. 

The conversation was about “what was possible in our stretch of river in town,” Puccerella said. “We didn’t know the answer to that.” 

An engineering study was funded in 2017 to look at what was possible. 

“The conclusion,” he laughed, “was not much. It’s pretty flat and we don’t have a lot of flow. That doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be recreational improvement.”

The study equates Alamosa’s stretch of low-flowing river, less than one mile per foot downhill through town, to a “skinny lake.” 

Puccerella explained that Alamosa’s portion of the river doesn’t have the flows or drops to ever get whitewater, even in a good year. A lot of the water that flows from the mountains into the river is diverted to different systems throughout the San Luis Valley. By the time the river reaches Alamosa, its flows are quite slow. 

What we do have, he said, is flatwater.

That’s not a negative, though. “It creates opportunity for family-friendly recreation.” 

Construction is still a ways out. Alamosans can expect construction to begin sometime around fall 2026. A lot of money still needs to be raised, and a lot can happen between now and then. What planners won’t have to worry about is the Army Corps of Engineers’ levee recertification. 

BEACHFRONT PROPERTY

When construction is finished, the western levee, the side of the river adjacent to Cole Park, will be pulled back and a highly accessible riverfront beach will be added. Right now there’s a fairly steep, unfriendly drop to the water. In the future, there will be easy access for everyone. 

The Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project is heading up the funding and providing the support to engineers throughout the project’s timeframe. During the summer, the group held two community feedback meetings to both inform and learn. From those meetings, project planners were able to adjust the plans. 

Final plans will be revealed to the public in early 2025. These preliminary renderings can give us a hint, however. 

“We’re doing this because this is what the community wanted,” said Cassandra McCuen, program manager for the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project. She called the project “amazing and transformative.” 

McCuen and Puccerella joined Outdoor Citizen podcast host Marty Jones to talk more about the project and provide updates. You can listen to that episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

From those community meetings, project planners were able to incorporate community feedback. Two of the most important pieces of feedback for engineers and designers: ensuring as much of the project is ADA accessible as possible, and making sure the river and beachfront are safe. 

Access from Cole Park will be a priority, as it will serve as a kind of hub. The project calls for a few more boat ramps, adding to the two Alamosa currently has. These boat ramps won’t be for motorboats, but personal watercraft such as paddle boards, tubes, kayaks, and canoes. 

Increasing recreational potential increases recreational safety. Currently, Puccerella and McCuen said, floating south of Cole Park isn’t advised. The West Side Ditch Diversion and the railroad bridge are a bit of a snag of willows, rusty metal, and splintered wood. 

INSIDE THE LEVEE

“Inside the levee it’s more complicated,” McCuen said. 

When it comes to changing the levee or potentially changing how water flows through town, you answer to the Army Corps of Engineers. 

The Corps is responsible for ensuring that levees don’t fail during a proverbial “hundred-year flood.” Alamosa has a history of regular and devastating flooding. The levee system protects Alamosa proper and East Alamosa. Without a certified levee system, property owners are required to pay for flood insurance. 

The recertification process is still many years out. The riverfront project is just a few years out. McCuen said the city has been an amazing partner in supporting the project. 

With that in mind, project planners were able to meet with the Army Corps of Engineers and provide them with a full rundown of the project, plus the support of the city of Alamosa, and their proposal to pull the levee back. 

McCuen said it was a real point of concern, because the project planners were unsure of how the Corps would react to the project’s proposal of pulling the levee back and the inner-levee restoration work.

McCuen said they were finally able to meet with the Army Corps in August. During that meeting, the Corps told the project planners they would be willing to work with them, “as long as you do not impact the flows through Alamosa negatively.”

Pulling the levee back to make way for a beach won’t impact flows in a noticeable way.

“Our project has worked seamlessly with the work that’s gone into levee recertification,” she said. 

FISH PASSAGE

People are not only getting an upgrade, but so are the wildlife. This project is unique and special to Alamosa through both its recreation and restoration efforts. McCuen said the attempt is to improve the natural condition of the Rio Grande through town alongside increasing its recreational value. From the planning phase onward, restoration has been at the forefront of the project. 

In-town restoration work can be complicated due to the levee recertification, but also due to the geographical limitations Puccerella mentioned. The river is extremely confined, McCuen explained. 

Part of that confinement is because the Rio Grande is a very developed river. For example, diverting the Rio Grande’s flow before it reaches Alamosa creates that low flow prime for paddling and floating, but it also makes the water warm. 

Warm water is bad for the Rio Grande’s fish. “Super-duper low flows make the area hot,” McCuen said. So one of the major aspects of the restoration portion is creating a safe, cool fish passage. 

“We want fish to be able to flow upstream and downstream.” 

The fish passage would simply be deeper channels that fish would use as aquatic highways. Also needed are fish refuges, or backwater habitats that exist along the river to serve as places where native fish can take refuge from non-native carp and pike.

Restoring the Rio Grande will take time and effort, but connecting the people back to the river is a start. 

“We really wanted to create a project that spoke to the culture of Alamosa, spoke to the community, is something the community wanted, and I think we’re gonna get there because people took time out of their day to be involved in all this,” McCuen said.