The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

River project’s designers will meet with concerned faculty

Matthew Resenhoeft

UW-Eau Claire faculty members with concerns about the proposed project to stabilize the Chippewa River bank can meet with the project’s engineers at 3:30 p.m. today in the conference room of the Facilities Planning and Management building.

The meeting is in response to a signed letter submitted to Chancellor Donald Mash last week by nine university professors outlining their concerns with the project, asking for its primary data and requesting the Department of Natural Resources to hold a public hearing on the project’s permit status.

After the administration received the letter, Vice Chancellor Andy Soll said he repeated an offer to schedule a meeting with concerned faculty and the project’s designers during an April 9 meeting with the professors.

The $950,000 stabilization project would address the university’s concern for the gradual eroding of the Chippewa’s southside bank. The plans include constructing a 1,200-foot long bank made of chunks of limestone rocks, running from 100 feet before the footbridge to Putnam Park and extending a slope about 32 feet into the river.

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Kathy Kalsheur, a project manager for the state’s Division of Facilities Development, which is in charge of the project, will be at today’s meeting.

Chris Goodwin and Dean Steines, water resource engineers for Ayres Associates, a local engineering firm hired for the project, also will give a presentation on the project and field questions from attending professors.

One of the concerned faculty members, geography professor Sean Hartnett, said he hopes the professors attending the meeting will walk away from it with the type of data needed to evaluate the potential impact of the project’s design from a more informed position.

“This is the meeting we’ve been calling for since day one,” Hartnett said.

Until the group really gets the full, hands-on data for the project, it can’t make an informed judgment on whether to support the project, he said.

“It’s the heart of the matter,” Hartnett said. “This is the critical information.”

The group’s primary concern is below the water surface, he said, dealing with the impact the design may have on the river’s channel flow. Hartnett compared the design’s possible effect on the flow to that of throwing a brick in a stream, because water gets displaced.

If water is displaced by the proposed project, Hartnett said there is a concern whether it will create back water that could affect Owen Park.

Some of the group’s other concerns deal with the need for such a large stabilization design, vegetation impact, bank stabilization, effects on Putnam Park and community relations and whether designers considered alternative designs.

Hartnett said the group is hoping to look at the data behind the design plan to see if the project is necessary and if it will have any effect on the river’s environment, which DNR and Ayres Associates officials previously have said it won’t.

But the meeting is not a question of the professors’ data vs. the project’s data, Hartnett said. It is more about seeing how the designers decided on the project’s current solution.

“Here we’re trying to get to the core of the data, and hopefully we get there,” Hartnett said.

Goodwin said the meeting will explain the designers’ side of the project, which will include the project’s history, why they went with the proposed solution, the details of its design and the hydraulic evaluation of the river channel.

Goodwin said the project’s scheduled starting date hasn’t been affected yet but could be if the DNR does not approve a permit by about May 15.

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River project’s designers will meet with concerned faculty