Not all boulders are equal – or wanted – on the Kern River
River enthusiasts are dismayed and alarmed by Kern County’s plan to use riprap – boulders and chunks of rock – to shore up the bank along Kernville’s Riverside Park, which was damaged during the 2023 flood.
Dumping riprap on the bank of an otherwise accessible and heavily used section of the Kern River is a huge missed opportunity, according to local boaters and others. It can also be dangerous, they say.
People will still scramble over the rocks to get to the water, so riprap isn’t a deterrent and can cause injury, according to Tom Moore, owner of Sierra South, a whitewater rafting company.
Besides, he said, the county put riprap on that same bank in the early 2000s and it got “blown out” by the river in 2023.
It’s illogical and wasteful, he said, to do the exact same thing and expect a different result when the next flood comes through – which may happen this winter as a “super” El Niño pattern is currently building in the Pacific Ocean.
“We don’t get why they don’t see that,” Moore said of county officials.
Instead, he said, the county could take this opportunity to reinforce the banks and build a whitewater park using flat boulders to create terraced, step-down access to the river with features to constrict the river’s flow and install underwater drop down infrastructure to create rapids.
In that instance, the rock would be cemented in place, not just dumped at the shoreline and would be safer in a flood. A scaled down version of such a whitewater park was put in place by the Army Corps of Engineers back in the 1970s, Moore said. But it deteriorated over the years.
Replacing and enhancing that original whitewater park would be a major tourist attraction, Moore said, pointing to other whitewater parks in Idaho and Colorado.
A local group even went to the effort of hiring Riverside Engineering, to write a feasibility study on such a plan back in 2011. And Riverside Engineering contacted the county again last June about the idea.
The county’s position is that replacing riprap at Riverside Park is what the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster recovery grant will pay for, so that’s the project it’s going to build.
All the same access points will be available to the public, said Kern County General Services Chief Michelle Burns-Lusich.
“We’ve restored the park that was damaged in the flood and we’re replacing what was previously on the bank to protect our park,” Burns-Lusich said.
She understands that some people in the Kernville area have been talking about a whitewater park but that would require a whole different set of funding, authorizations and permits.
“This project will only be on the embankment, we don’t have any permits to get into the river,” she said.
Kern County Supervisor Phillip Peters, who represents Kernville, agreed that a whitewater park is far beyond the scope of what the county applied for through FEMA.
Besides, he is not on board with the county creating an even stronger attraction for people to get into the “killer Kern,” noting the liability could be massive.
“Our messaging is to keep people out of that river,” he said. “We’re already constantly doing rescues to keep them from drowning.”
A whitewater park might be possible if private groups or entities wanted to take it on. But, even then, he said, it would take a decade or more to get sign off from the Forest Service, Water Resources Control Board, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and other agencies, and do the required federal and state environmental studies.
After all of that, a whitewater park would have to be operated and maintained by someone.
“The county is not in the business of running parks like that,” he said.
He said he has met with locals in the area to explain the county’s position but, apparently, may need to do more.
Peters, and the public, will have the opportunity to discuss all those issues at a “Save Riverside Park!” town hall meeting on Wednesday, July 1 from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Kernville Chamber of Commerce, 11447 Kernville Road.
