Developers officially break ground on a white water course on the Chattahoochee River in Columbus Thursday.

Richard Bishop is working on the 20 million dollar public private partnership project. He says a construction crew has been working on it for a couple of weeks, making an access road to the river. Part of the work entails blowing up two major dams, but that won't happen until later this year.

"It’s a huge environmental project because it brings this back to the original flow," says Bishop, "and the habitat can come back to where it was in the old days and the fish can continue up and down the river now where the dams have stopped that process."

Bishop says they'd planned on starting construction last Spring, but it was delayed because of the rigorous permitting process.

He and city officials hope it will be an economic boon to the region when it opens in 2013.

Tags: economic development, Columbus, whitewater, Whitewater project, Richard Bishop, dam