Chairmans Report (Zeke Ward)Zeke spoke of his meeting with Senator Allard. He wants
to make sure that he is always aware of our program.
Zeke spoke of the Army Corp and of the potential of them helping us. David Gregory of the
Army Corp in Albuquerque has volunteered to be on our TAC committee. David Bethke (retired
USGS) has also offered to be on the TAC committee with the understanding that he
won’t be able to attend all the meetings since he only lives part of the year in
Creede and the rest of the time on the East Coast.
Chuck Barnes motioned that David be nominated to the TAC committee and Phil also be
nominated contingent that he give a speech.
Numerous people seconded and all were in favor.
Phil gave us a rain check on the speech.
Coordinator’s Report (Glen Miller)
Glen spoke of the in kind donations being tracked and recorded on our web site. We are
looking good for the total amounts and should easily have enough especially when the
county’s work at the Commodore, Riverwatch, and others kick in.
We are short on specific tasks such as historical characterization.
The Army Corp has some money under sec. 22 that could be used as a match with whatever
we come up with to help get them involved. The groundwork has and is being lain for us to
be involved in the Army Corp Abandoned Mines Program which has a pot of 45 million dollars
for projects like us to dip in to.
Jim Mietz wanted to know if the program that the Army Corp is involved with, that would
fix up the flume; if it requires special legislation to get enacted? Zeke said that this
205 program does not require special legislation like the abandoned mines program, but
that the Army Corp only works on exact, well defined project specific programs.
Pete Magee who was authorized by the six counties including Mineral County to
coordinate a GIS program, says he will put together $1500 worth of in kind match if we can
budget $2000 worth of 319 money for digitizing our existing maps. Steve Russell and Jim
Mietz spoke of the importance of our GIS program being compatible with the Forest Service,
NRCS, and the data being put together for the six counties. Steve said the logistics of
updating information and keeping it compatible are still being worked out.
Glen gave an overview of the Willow Creek GIS program which is on the web.
This involves getting a 1:4000 contour base map; the forest service gave us a 1:8000 last
spring.
Les Dobson volunteered to produce a paper 1:4000 map base map for us.
Stephen Wardell spoke of a FEMA (Project Impact)meeting in Maryland to be held in
February.
The six San Luis Valley Counties (Costilla, Conejos, Alamosa, Rio Grande, Sauguage,
& Mineral) have been designated a region by FEMA and representatives from the six
counties are to go to this seminar in Maryland for training about potential emergency
situations, natural disasters, etc.
Zeke advised that Glen be a representative on that local committee.
The water data from the Riverwatch program should be in soon. The data from the ACZ lab
is in now and anybody that wants a copy can pick one up at this meeting. ACZ run all
parameters on eight sites as well as 2 metals, Total Organic Carbon, Total Dissolved
Solids, & Total Suspended Solids on all sites.
Glen is working a deal with the Sangre de Cristo Lab in Alamosa to do various water
sampling work in the future such as back up check samples and episodic event samples.
Gareth Davies was not able to find any dye in the samples that we sent him. We will
continue to send more samples.
Perry Alspaugh and Glen advised that we not install a new measuring flume at the Nelson
until we see what the construction between the pipe and the splash pool at the Commodore
is going to consist of, and work at that time to install a new measuring system at the
Nelson Adit.
Perry spoke of installing a 15 foot cutthroat flume (spoken of by Steve Russell) at the
guaging station that would handle 600 cfs of flow and be an easy check on the accuracy of
the record being produced at the station. Zeke advised that anything installed at the
flume be forestalled until we find out what the Army Corps plans are for fixing it.
JB told of his temperature evaluations of total flow. By measuring the temperature of
the Nelson (about 65 degrees) and West Willow above and below the Nelson and the
temperatures of East and West Willow near their confluence, he determined that the Nelson
contributes about 10% of the overall flow of Willow Creek. East Willow makes up about 2/3
of the flow and at present, the bulk of the West Willow flow is coming from the Nelson
Adit. Zeke spoke that another significant source may be groundwater between the adit and
the East Willow confluence.
Historical Characterization from Eric Twitty (Report from Vince Spero)
This report consists of over 160 pages of Historical Context. It speaks of mining in
the Creede area in context with mining all over the state of Colorado and the American
West according to the prevailing attitudes of the times and is broken down into the
physical setting, economic geology, and existing technologies. Specific mine sites are not
discussed in detail in this report but are to come shortly in another report along with
maps, drawings, and pictures. The specific areas in this report will include all mining
done on the Amethyst vein which is West Willow Creek. The Bulldog and East Willow areas
will be studied next year and put into context with the overall area.
Vince only received the report last night and hasn’t had time to read the entire
thing. Eric worked with the State Historical Society on the format and information that
should be in this report. Each site will be recorded on specific forms provided by the
State Historical Office. Vince pointed out that Eric went beyond the minimum standards and
did a class 3 investigation including photographs of archival quality. Sandra advised that
we get these pictures put on CD. Zeke pointed out that this is normally quite inexpensive.
The Forest Service is very interested in this general context report because most of
the specific sites studied are not on Forest Service land but Forest land will very much
have to do with the general context of this report.
Winding Stream Channel (Steve Russell)
Steve has the state engineer scheduled to come down and have a look at the braided
channel below Creede.
Meeting adjourned shortly before 3:00 PM
Minutes submitted by: Approved and accepted:
_________________________
__________________________
Glen Miller
Zeke Ward
Project Watershed Coordinator
Chairman
Next meeting is scheduled for February 2nd at 1:00 PM at the Creede Town Hall.
Things to be discussed are...
The Riverwatch data and more.
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