{"id":104366,"date":"2016-06-29T15:30:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-college-focuses-on-western-water-issues\/"},"modified":"2016-06-29T15:30:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:30:22","slug":"colorado-college-focuses-on-western-water-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-college-focuses-on-western-water-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado College focuses on Western water issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Several
Several student researchers and staff with the State of the Rockies Project took an EcoFlight, a program that uses small aircraft to advocate for protecting wildlands and habitat. The Monday flight from Durango was to survey the Gladstone area and Gold King Mine, just north of Silverton.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

An annual<\/p>\n

On Monday morning, several student researchers and staff with the State of the Rockies Project<\/a> took a flight from Durango to survey from above the Gladstone area and Gold King Mine, just north of Silverton.<\/p>\n

The aircraft dipped sideways toward a lush, green mountain slope, revealing a view of the mine where 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage gushed last August into Cement Creek and then the Animas and San Juan rivers after an Environmental Protection Agency crew breached the portal.<\/p>\n

The pilot, Gary Kraft, routinely takes students, native tribes, environmentalists and other groups up to get a birds-eye view of environmental issues through EcoFlight<\/a>, a program that uses small aircraft to advocate for protecting wildlands and habitat.<\/p>\n

Michael Gorman, EcoFlight program coordinator, said the flights are advantageous to learning about mine drainage issues in the highly mineralized Silverton caldera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese flights let people see the land for what it is,\u201d Gorman said. \u201cEveryone gets the same perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Below the Gold King, passengers could see another pock in the mountainside \u2013 a temporary treatment facility catching drainage from the mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was struck by the scale of it,\u201d said Emelie Frojen, a Colorado College senior. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how small one mine is compared to the scale of the damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group will meet this week with officials to learn about the Animas-La Plata Project and the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s plans for managing the Hermosa Creek area, and will attend an Animas River Stakeholders Group meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to make complex issues more digestible,\u201d Brendan Boepple, assistant project director, said of the State of the Rockies Project, which produces an annual report on its focus of study.<\/p>\n

jpace@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students take EcoFlight to survey Gold King from above<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[304,222,13,2461],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animas-river","tag-environmental-pollution","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-gold-king-mine-spill"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104366"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}