Proposed plans for the Chippewa River bank stabilization project seemed headed for permit approval despite faculty concerns at a meeting of project officials and university faculty Thursday in a packed conference room of Facilities Planning and Management building.

During the almost three-hour discussion, the main theme stressed by various officials with the project was that its design is the proper solution to solving the bank stabilization safety concern.

Vice Chancellor Andrew Soll said people have to believe the proposed project is what it’s going to take to achieve a balance between making the bank stabilized and intruding into the river.

Soll also said he’s confident the other designs have been looked at, and to go back to the drawing board at this stage really could set the project back a while, possibly 10 years.

Department of Natural Resources’ Dan Koyich, a water regulation and zoning specialist, said to put another year into this project would bump its price up about $100,000.

He said a permit for the project still has to be approved by the DNR and the Army Corps of Engineers. But Koyich said, although he wishes the project was smaller in size, he’s pretty confident it’s as good as it gets.

“It’s too early to draw a conclusion,” Koyich said, “but my gut feeling is `yeah, this project was done right.’ ”

Doug Faulkner, a geography professor, said there is a potential for increased flooding caused by the proposed redevelopment, which could hurt community relations with the university.

Even if increased flooding isn’t due to the redevelopment, Faulkner said the community may have that perception unless the state does some public relations to ease that concern.

“(The university) is an integral part of this community,” Faulkner said. “We just can’t build a road and move elsewhere.”

Faculty also questioned the necessity of the project’s size to solve the stabilization problem. Geology professor Brian Mahoney related the design’s magnitude for solving the bank problem to that of shooting a fly with an elephant gun.

Though the project’s engineer Chris Goodwin of Ayres Associates said its designers, who actually wanted to go further down river with the slope, could not satisfy the project’s needs with a smaller design.

“We want to err on the conservative side,” Goodwin said, “because we want to put our stamp on those plans.”

Geography professor Sean Hartnett expressed a more natural approach preferring the river be left alone.

“The model that I really believe in is that river works,” said Hartnett, who added the river’s natural model shouldn’t be intruded because it seems so fine-tuned.

One goal of the faculty group, who sent a letter to Chancellor Mash two weeks ago asking for more access to the project’s data, was to walk away from the meeting with “hands-on data,” Hartnett said last week.

The project’s state manager Kathy Kalsheur told the group it would have to go through an open records process with the state to access the project’s full data. She said Ayres Associates, the engineering firm hired for the project, does not own the project’s design so it could not hand over data to faculty.

The DNR wants to check on how the project’s contractor will run redevelopment construction, Koyich said, but basically there are just minor points still to be looked at.

He also said he hopes the meeting’s attendees can come to some sort of majority opinion on the project.

“I hope this group comes to a consensus as far as this design,” Koyich said. “We’re not there yet.”