In the event you hadn’t heard, the city of Grand Rapids had been considering restoring part of the Grand River to it’s natural state at the urging of the Grand Rapids White Water organization. The idea is to return some white water features in the downtown area by removing some low head dams. After about three years, countless meetings, negotiations, and a vigilant belief in the project, our buddy Chip hit it out of the park.
Congrats to the Grand Rapids White Water organization, and to everyone who helped get the project off the ground. I hope to hear from Chip in person on the pertinent details in the next week or so.
What follows is the post from their facebook wall:
It’s official: Last night the Grand Rapids Whitewater dream was adopted by the City Commission along with all of the other brilliant parks, bicycling, clean water and urban forest projects. No other city has ever opened up it’s master planning process to the public in such a way. It took three years and every citizen had an opportunity to speak or act in favor of their ideas for a better community. The Green Grand Rapids process in now being studied at the University of Wisconsin.
I look forward to hearing more about the progress, and also getting people down in Kalamazoo ready to do some white water kayaking. Time to start thinking about a white water kayak!!!
Hi and thanks for making the effort to describe the terminlogy to the novices!