LEWISTON – The serene flow from the waterfall in Courthouse Plaza might be nice, but it’s not what engineers had in mind.

“Optimally, we’d wanted it to be more like white water on the right and left sides,” said Public Building Director Mike Paradis. “It was designed to look like rapids, and it doesn’t do that.”

The fountain has three pools. Water flows out of the center pool over smooth, glassy stone – just as it was designed to do.

But the walls of the right and left pools are rougher, and the water there is supposed to match.

Instead, water flows smoothly out of all three glassy pools.

“But, people out there seem to like it the way it is,” Paradis said. “If you ask 90 percent of the people out there, they say it looks lovely.”

Paradis said a new pump installed on June 10 is the culprit. At 3 horsepower, it’s too small to get the right effect.

The small pump replaced a larger one, 30 horsepower, that proved to be far too powerful. Even at the lowest setting, it overflowed the fountain and sent water cascading down the plaza.

“I’d just call it a design error,” Paradis said. “There was no doubt that the first pump was wrong. Now it’s a matter of finding the right one.”

Paradis said he’s aiming for something between 3 and 30 horsepower. He wants the engineers who designed the plaza, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc., to install a 5-horsepower engine.

That doesn’t mean the city is opting for rapids, however.

“If we put in the bigger pump, we can get the effect we’d planned on,” Paradis said. “Then, we have choices. If people like it the way it is now, we can turn it down. But at least we’d have the option.”

The city and L/A Arts, whose offices border Courthouse Plaza, banded together to pay for the design. The city paid $390,000 and the arts group paid $295,000.