Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997 | 11:05 a.m.
Enterprise residents and county planners object to a request by Jim Rhodes, developer of the Rhodes Ranch community, to build a flood control channel through a park rather than his project.
The channel currently is planned to go along the west side of Durango Drive. Rhodes wants it on the east side of the road, where county parks officials are planning a 290-acre regional park.
The County Commission is scheduled to hear the request at Wednesday's zoning meeting.
County planners said moving the channel would interfere with plans for a future park and school. Planners also said it would cost taxpayers more money for the redesign of the channel, school and park.
"It would result in a portion of the park being developed as a channel for the movement of flood waters," Parks and Recreation Director Glenn Trowbridge said. "But if the County Commission directs staff to have the channel moved to within the park we will accommodate the commission's direction."
The park plan approved by the board last December shows a golf course and soccer fields incorporated with a 40-acre school site. A channel would provide a swale that would periodically fill with flood water, Trowbridge said, which would have to be staked off to prevent children from falling in.
It also would leave county workers with repair and clean-up problems following a flood, he said.
The county wound up with the 290-acre site east of Durango in a deal with Rhodes for a similar-sized parcel on the west side of the road. The swap gave Rhodes a contiguous 1,400 acres he swapped with the Bureau of Land Management for pristine land in the Spring Mountain Range once owned by the Cashman family.
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