River restoration

This image depicts the scope of work being undertaken on the west end of the Valley Floor, a project delayed by a year because of last year’s summer-long high flow of the San Miguel River. (Image courtesy of the Town of Telluride)

A river rechanneling and tailings recap project on the west end of the Valley Floor has been put in motion this week after a year’s delay. 

Originally green-lighted by Telluride Town Council last year, the project was put on hold when abundant winter snowpack made for what town project manager Lance McDonald called “abnormally high flows in June and July.” But this year, conditions are ideal and the project’s first phase — the creation of an access road off the Spur west of Eider Creek — kicked off Tuesday. The ambitious plan includes capping the tailings on the northwest end of the Valley Floor and rerouting the river where it runs near those tailings.

The tailings pile (the Society Turn Tailings Pile No. 1) spans 23 acres and sits south of the abandoned railroad grade on either side of the river. It is subject to a cleanup agreement between Idarado Mining Company and the State of Colorado that calls for capping and revegetating the contaminated area in place. The Remedial Action Plan allows the landowner — the town — to offer an alternative plan, which the town has done.

Rather than import materials to cover the tailings and create walls to shore it up along the river, the town proposes to relocate soil from the large berms east of the project along the Valley Floor, thereby minimizing traffic impacts, and to preserve spruce stands in the project area.

Additionally, the plan calls for rerouting the river’s course south of the tailings altogether, creating a natural wetlands buffer between the remediated tailings and the river. If it sounds like a massive project, it is.

“It’s very large, on a landscape scale,” McDonald said. “It’s not like building a building. It’s working across an entire landscape.”

Remediating the tailings area has long been in the town’s sights, McDonald said.

“It’s been in the works for 25 years,” he said. “It’s great to see it happening now.”

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