Officials hoping to build a whitewater park in Palisade will arrange boulders in the river in the same shapes used upstream at the Price-Stubb Dam if they win approval for the project.

Federal officials suggested that the city place the rocks in a chevron shape at various locations along the stretch of Colorado River near Riverbend Park, Town Administrator Tim Sarmo said.

Federal officials this spring completed $10 million worth of work on the Price-Stubb Dam to reopen the top of the ancestral range of the endangered Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker.

The fish can pass the remains of the dam at the mouth of De Beque Canyon by negotiating 190 concrete pylons arranged in 38 chevrons of five pylons, or baffles, each.

The chevron design breaks the flow of the water enough to allow the fish to bypass the dam.

Arranging boulders into chevron formations in the whitewater park downstream poses little difficulty, Sarmo said.

The proposed park contains three drop structures, which create eddies and riffles in which kayakers can perform maneuvers and tricks.

“I’m very optimistic we have met the standard,” Sarmo said. “In fact, we’ve gone above and beyond.”

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however, have yet to approve Palisade’s project, Sarmo said.

If Palisade is to build its whitewater park, it will need to be in the river on Oct. 1, the earliest date any such work could be done, Sarmo said.

The town’s contractor is “ready to mobilize” to get the project under way, he said. The sides likely will have to renegotiate once the project is approved to take into account higher fuel costs and other changes, Sarmo said.

Boulders were stockpiled near the whitewater park in 2007 in hopes that the project could have been completed last winter.

Pikeminnow, then known as squawfish, once swarmed up the Colorado River in such numbers they were dubbed “white salmon,” but construction of the Price-Stubb Dam a century ago cut the fish off from the top of their range.

They since have been declared endangered, along with the razorback suckers and two other species.

Federal officials are “doing their job,” Sarmo said. “They’re being particularly cautious about the endangered-fish passage because so much money has been spent on that particular program.”