Andy Tullis / The BulletinRocks are moved Thursday as a habitat channel is created at the Bend Whitewater Park. The park is expected to be open to the public in about another month.

Deschutes River floaters and boaters have just about another month to wait until the Bend Whitewater Park at Colorado Avenue is open to the public.

The Bend Park & Recreation District project has been under construction since late 2014. Funded through a $29 million bond approved by voters in 2012, the $9.7 million project will split the river into three channels — one for wildlife habitat, one for skilled whitewater paddlers and a safe passage for river floaters. The park is on target to be completed in late August.

This week, crews have been installing hand railings along a new pedestrian bridge and viewing platform and moving soil into the habitat channel located on the right side of the river looking downstream. Next week, the temporary bridge allowing heavy equipment to access the habitat channel is scheduled to start coming down.

The work has created an island in the habitat channel that will recede beneath the water once the project is complete, according to Chelsea Schneider, a park district landscape architect helping to oversee the project.

Schneider said flows out of Wickiup Reservoir were recently reduced, forcing the district to inflate a system of pneumatic bladders to raise the water level upstream of Colorado Avenue to protect the Oregon potted frog and consequently lowering water levels in the habitat channel. The island and other exposed soil now seen in the habitat channel will be planted with aquatic plants, she said, and will be submerged once work is complete.

The bladders allow the district to control the upstream water level and adjust the size and shape of waves in the whitewater channel located in the middle of the river, and the safe passage channel on the left side looking downstream. A computerized system to control the inflation and deflation of the bladders has not yet been installed, Schneider said, but the park district is now interviewing candidates for a “wave shaper” position that will operate the system and provide regular wave reports for the public.

The bladders are currently in the “down” position, said Brian Hudspeth, construction manager on the project, but can create a standing wave more than 6 feet tall just below the footbridge in the whitewater channel.

Leading a tour of the construction site Thursday, Hudspeth said whoever is hired as the district’s wave shaper will have an interesting job ahead.

Though 6-foot waves probably will be a rarity at the park, Hudspeth said the wave shaper will have to learn how to balance the amount of water flowing into all three channels, creating waves in the middle while maintaining a minimum flow for fish in the safe passage channel and for other wildlife in the habitat channel. Water levels upstream of Colorado Avenue will be adjustable 6 or 8 inches up or down, he said, keeping the upstream frog habitat sufficiently moist and maintaining the pond-like appearance of the river as it runs through the Old Mill District.

“These are the sort of things we have to learn to control under different water level conditions,” he said.

Once the project is complete, the boom that now guides floaters to the left side of the river will be rerouted to guide floaters in to the safe passage channel, and the new footbridge from McKay Park will be opened about halfway across . Much of McKay Park — where floaters portaging around the construction zone typically relaunch — will remain torn up and off-limits through the end of the summer, Schneider said, but will be rebuilt this winter to include an expanded beach area.

More intensive construction is scheduled to return to the area Oct. 5, with the closure of Colorado Avenue to install a tunnel under the road to connect two segments of the Deschutes River Trail. Detours around the site are expected to be in place through Nov. 17.

Schneider said the district is not planning an event to mark the completion of the project and the opening of the whitewater park to the public.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387,

shammers@bendbulletin.com