Leadville mill plan is: A. model for remediation B. threat to the Arkansas River C. Both

---

Sneak Peek of the Week

Proposal at Leadville Mill: recycling old mine waste or reviving buried mining legacy?

---

Nick Michael thinks he’s got a great idea. Collect ore and tailings from the slag piles scattered around Leadville, extract bits of silver and gold in a vat of chemicals and then store the waste in a permitted facility.

It’s a plan he’s been simmering since he bought the dormant Leadville Mill in California Gulch in 2008.

“Why create new quarries and mines when we have all this slag and ore we can use?” said Michael, who last month submitted his third application to the Colorado division of mining for a permit for his mill. “This is environmental justice and the circular economy.”

The plan is facing fierce opposition from residents in the Upper Arkansas River Valley who are concerned about the potential for a toxic spill in the headwaters of the Arkansas River and a return to a mining legacy that the community has spent half a century cleaning up. The Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s designated the California Gulch area — once home to hundreds of silver, lead and zinc hardrock mines — as a Superfund site, launching an ongoing 50-year cleanup project.

“Think about the mining history up there and what we’ve been through with the EPA and the Superfund and the settlements with mining companies. Why would we go back to that?” said Brice Karsh, the owner of the Rolling J Ranch, which has two miles of rehabilitated riverfront that was polluted by local mining decades ago.

Since 2021, Lake County and downstream residents and business owners — galvanized as Concerned Citizens for Lake County — have sent the state mining division dozens of letters opposing the mill plan. Many emphasize the shifting economy in Leadville and Lake County, with a growing emphasis on tourism and recreation, with concerns focused on how a cyanide leaching operation in the headwaters of the Arkansas River might threaten the region’s environment and economy.

Rafting and angling outfitters on the Arkansas River below Leadville — the most trafficked stretch of whitewater in the country — are closely watching the mill plan.

“We view this as a huge threat to the health of the Arkansas River,” said Rob Williams, the head of Noah’s Ark Adventure Co. in Buena Vista.

An economic analysis of commercial activity surrounding the Arkansas River shows 196,100 visitors spending $19 million with outfitters on the river in 2022. Add in lodging, food, travel and other spending and those visitors left $38.6 million in communities along the river in 2022.

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story

Breaking Trail

Wolves are roaming the width of the Western Slope

The latest map tracking collared wolves in Colorado shows the predators roaming the width of the Western Slope, from the Continental Divide in Grand County to near the Utah border in Rio Blanco County.

Last month we saw the animals reaching the Wyoming border in Jackson County to the north but stopping at Interstate 70 to the south. This month it looks like wolves have crossed I-70 in Eagle County. (CPW only releases maps that track the watersheds where collared wolves have roamed, not the exact locations of wolves.)

The latest report from Colorado Parks and Wildlife notes that one wolf’s collar has stopped working but the animal is roaming with another collared wolf. (The agency knows this after observing the wolves from an airplane.) A collar on another wolf is not working perfectly “and may not be fully functional in the near future,” according to the agency. CPW in 2022 reported that three collars placed on wolves that migrated into Colorado — two placed by CPW biologists in 2021 and one placed on a wolf in Wyoming in 2017 — had stopped functioning.

CPW also reports there have been no wolf deaths in Colorado and ranchers have not reported any livestock killed by wolves in the past month. The agency also confirmed that no wolves collared in Colorado have been killed in Wyoming, where hunting wolves is legal.

The Playground

A proposal for Plunge Point in Palisade

---

It’s been more than three years since the Palisade Plunge trail opened above Palisade. The 34-mile trail from the top of the Grand Mesa down to the Colorado River was a 10-year project, with most of those years spent uniting three federal federal land agencies, mountain bikers, private landowners and local communities. Today, the plunging trail is a crown jewel in Mesa County’s $875 million outdoor recreation economy.

“The name plunge should be forever associated with Palisade,” said Glenn Hayes, a longtime Palisade resident who filed a request in 2021 with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Board on Geographic Names to name prominent features above Palisade as “Plunge Point” and “Plunge Mesa.”

The Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board this week began deliberating the possible names for the jagged stone point and ridge above the Grand Valley. The federal naming board this month included the proposed name on its quarterly list of naming proposals up for consideration.

“I’ve had lots of people ask me if there’s a name for that point,” said Hayes of the unnamed features prominently seen above Palisade.

Hayes said the Palisade Town Council has been supportive of his proposal and he doubts there will be much controversy over the suggested name. Anna Stout, the mayor of Grand Junction and a member of the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board, told her fellow board members this week that she does not expect opposition to the Plunge Point and Plunge Mesa suggestion. The state and federal naming boards spend more time deliberating changes to names of existing geographic features, with extensive outreach to communities and tribes.

“We certainly benefit from the tourism the Palisade Plunge brings to the area,” said Stout, who plans to solicit support from Mesa County commissioners. “We worked with multiple agencies to bring together the Palisade Plunge and it’s a great example of diverse groups working together.”

The outdoor recreation economy in Mesa County is flourishing, not just on the tourism side but with a growing stable of outdoor businesses in the Grand Valley. A 2022 study by researchers at Colorado Mesa University showed recreation-based tourism contributing $227.2 million to Mesa County’s economy and outdoor businesses delivering another $131.3 million. Together the $227.2 million account for 3.3% of Mesa County’s annual gross economic activity and supports 7,620 jobs. Add in the overall impact of labor income, visitors and businesses and outdoor recreation in Mesa County is an $875 million annual industry.

Conor Hall, the head of the Colorado outdoor recreation office, said the localized Mesa County outdoor economy numbers are the only ones of their kind in the country.

“Not to pick on the extractive industries, but that is significantly larger, both in terms of jobs and economic impact than that industry that so many people look to as the key pillar of this economy,” Hall said this week in Grand Junction at a celebration for the Grand Valley Outdoor Coalition, one of 13 outdoor recreation councils around the state. “We have to be transparent that this really is one of the major drivers of this community.”

The Guide

Cultivating youth perspectives on Colorado’s Sand Creek and Amache tragedies

The dry Sand Creek streambed on the Colorado prairie where U.S. troops murdered 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864 is about 46 miles from the Amache camp where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in 1942.

The two locations are bound in the darkest chapters of Colorado history and last spring descendants of both tragedies converged to launch an idea: create a youth program that ensures the history of Sand Creek and Amache will resonate for future generations.

A new grant from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Outdoor Equity Grant fund will carry that vision forward, creating a Youth Ambassador Program that includes visits to both National Historic Sites alongside descendants of Sand Creek and Amache.

“There’s a desire from within the descendant communities to increase youth participation in events that are already happening,” says Annie Danis, an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona who has done archeological work at the Amache site for nearly 10 years and helped secure the grant. “We’re just trying to bring resources to people who haven’t always been included. And that’s mostly a younger generation of descendants.”

As many as 12 young people ages 14 to 25 will participate in two four-day visits to the sites as part of the annual Amache pilgrimage in May and the Sand Creek Spiritual Healing Run in the fall. A virtual youth summit in January will follow with students discussing how experiences at both sites have impacted them. The grant, with a focus on youth perspectives, will help incorporate the students’ voices into interpretive programming at both sites.

“I’ve always been one to advocate for the youth learning their history,” says Greg Lamebull, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma who serves on the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation’s board of directors. “And this history is being lost.”

>> Click here to read this story by Kevin Simpson

---

Could the Steamboat Brown Ranch vote prove the argument for statewide mandates on affordable housing?

Voters in Steamboat Springs have rejected a plan to build more than 2,200 affordable units in a community for 6,000 local workers. The vote overturned the city’s annexation of a portion of Brown Ranch, a 534-acre parcel west of town that was purchased with $24 million from an anonymous donor.

The lack of affordable housing in Colorado’s high country — and really all over the state — is defined as “a crisis.” In fact, the crux of the crisis is in getting affordable housing approved. Across the state, plans for density in mountain communities always raise hackles. Recent workforce housing proposals in Basalt, Glenwood Springs,Telluride and Vail have foundered as residents raise concerns about wildlife, traffic, environmental impacts and blows to the amorphous “quality of life” that draws so many to Colorado’s idyllic valleys.

The Brown Ranch plan was big. Perhaps the biggest affordable housing proposal ever for the Western Slope, with early cost estimates for infrastructure tipping past $480 million. Opponents who forced the special election vote this week argued the plan was too big for the community of 13,000 and market rate homes should be in the mix to help offset the costs.

But the size of the Brown Ranch project matched the magnitude of Steamboat Springs’ housing crisis, said Jason Peasely, the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. The authority, which received the anonymous donation in 2021, still owns the land and Peasely promised diligent work toward a new plan for attainable housing on the property west of the city.

That new plan will likely be smaller. And communities around Colorado will be watching. In Crested Butte, town leaders are starting to work with Gunnison County on a possible annexation of property slated for a $61 million project that could add 240 affordable housing units to the town of 1,500.

There was a lot of mountain-town angst over last year’s Senate Bill 213, a land-use bill presented by Gov. Jared Polis as a long-term answer to the state’s struggle to get affordable housing built. The failed bill originally required towns and counties to zone for higher density residential projects and local leaders lamented how statewide mandates might change local land use and zoning rules that had been crafted over many years.

When Senate Bill 213 died, a Polis spokesperson said the governor was “deeply disappointed,” adding that “changing the status quo isn’t easy.”

It’s hard not to wonder: If communities keep rejecting affordable housing, could more statewide legislation forcing density follow?

— j

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.