Published: July 15, 2009 08:30 am      

River park would be valuable asset for city

Recently, there have been several articles and letters on the proposed whitewater course in Cumberland and on the dam beneath the Blue Bridge.

Overall, this discussion is good because the Potomac River offers the regional community a valuable natural and historical resource.

Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the upcoming Visioning Session for the river is part of the community addressing how to best utilize the river. It will be one of many community involvements on this issue. My comments here are independent of that process.

The situation facing Cumberland is conceptually similar to the situation which faced Reno, Nev., as part of their downtown revitalization. The Truckee River runs through the center of their city and before the renovations, if you didn’t know the river was there, you would miss it. Cumberland’s situation is similar.

For Reno, the issue was how to revitalize the river corridor for the local community. They created a trail system and naturalized the levee system. The focus was on the entire corridor to make it usable by people while protecting the environmental integrity of the resource. Also, flood control was addressed in the naturalization process and not compromised.

Cumberland already has many of these elements in place. The centerpiece in the overall revitalization of the river resource was the creation of a river park that features a whitewater course. I stress the park concept because the whitewater course is viewed in the context of the entire river resource and its development.

It is not simply plopping a whitewater course in the middle of Cumberland because there is a dam that needs to be replaced. It is using the whitewater course as a center piece to focus the community on the river and to attract people to the river park and its amenities.

The similarities with Reno don’t end here. On the island in the center of the river next to the whitewater course, they constructed an amphitheater, pavilions and picnic areas, flower beds, paths to walk on, and other infrastructure. Cumberland has already developed much of this supportive infrastructure for a river park and whitewater course with Canal Place. Like Reno, the main use of the river park would come from the local community enjoying the trails and the picturesque views provided by the whitewater course.

A dam has been in this general location for 159 years. Over the years, its location and function have changed to meet changing economic and community needs. Initially, it met the canal’s need to divert water into the canal, and later it served the purpose of diverting water into the industries along Kelly Road.

Its current location is underneath the Blue Bridge. As a historic artifact, the dam has little intrinsic value other than servicing the changing economic and community needs of the community.

The proposed whitewater course would maintain the existing pool level behind the dam. It needs the pool and vertical drop provided by the dam to create the whitewater course. All the proposed whitewater course would do is move where the pool starts upriver from the existing dam. In addition, the whitewater course eliminates a hazard, creates a free flowing river, and increases water quality.

Like Reno, a river park with a whitewater course as its centerpiece would bring people to the river and it would serve as a constant reminder of the historic and cultural importance of the Potomac River to the growth and development of this region.

As it always has in the past, the dam would again become functional by contributing to the future growth and development of the community.

Robert B. Kauffman

Frostburg