Reclamation Realized

More than 11,000 cubic yards of coal removed. Seventeen different species—15,450 individual plants—set into the ground. More than 125 pounds of seed mix spread with species such as yarrow, paintbrush, lupine and flax. Recovering from 40 years of hard mining that ended in 1929.

These are just some of the reclamation numbers of the Slate River wetlands on the Gunsight Bridge parcel. This 120-acre connector from the Lower Loop to BLM land was permanently preserved by the Crested Butte Land Trust (CBLT) in 2003, with a conservation easement held by the town of Crested Butte.
Tara Tafi, project manager from the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety (DRMS), led volunteers through the reclamation site on Saturday, October 22, after a rigorous day of planting willow, wood rose, shrubby cinquefoil and wax currant on the wetland buffer zone of the project area.
The group tiptoed through loose soil and small nuggets of coal, 11,000 wetland plugs and 30 sod patches that dot the recovering wetland like implants for a receding hairline. Rhizomes from the plugs will spread roots and shoots from nodes underground to propagate more wetland plants. Blue joint, reed grass, beaked sedge, water sedge, Baltic rush, tufted hairgrass and large-leaf avens are all part of the optimistic mix.
Meanwhile, the surviving wetland creeps in, slowly growing over the now-exposed topsoil and thin layer of coal. Tafi estimates that in five years, the plants will have won and the wetland will once again function like the filtering system it should be.

Where did the coal come from?
Tafi and the DRMS, in partnership with the CBLT and the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition (CCWC), are cleaning up the mining refuse from the second-largest coal mine in the Crested Butte region in the late 1800s. Duane Vandenbusche, author of The Gunnison Country, writes that Crested Butte father Howard Smith purchased all of Smith Hill in 1879 after turning up prized high-quality anthracite coal.
The Smith Hill Mine began operations in 1882 with a 1,628-foot tramway running from the mine on top of Smith Hill to a mammoth, 80-foot coal breaker. The only anthracite breaker west of Pennsylvania, it crushed and sized the coal; the Denver Rio Grand railway then hauled it away. Standing next to a small and now uncovered stream, Tafi says the coal in that spot rose to eye level. Along with the waste, Tafi’s crew also unearthed a lot of trash, including shoes and bottles from the era. One bottle, she reports, reeked with the booze still sloshing inside.

The Process of Reclamation
The reclamation area is 2.7 acres of Slate River wetlands where the coal breaker sat, and five acres of upland revegetation where the tram once led up to Cloud City. The reclamation process sounds like an archeological dig. In one area slated for wetland plugs, root evidence of upland vegetation changed the revegetation plan in that spot. Another section yielded the dark peat of an historic fen. The crew uncovered small streams, buried under feet of coal, yet still tenaciously making their way to the Slate.
Hauling the coal away is cost-prohibitive, explains Tafi, but since the coal in Crested Butte is low sulfur, abandoned coal mines like the Smith Hill Mine are not cursed with acid mine drainage. When so thickly layered, however, water cannot percolate up to the surface to support plant life.
The task of restoration becomes not to remove all of the coal, but to restore the pre-mining hydrology to the wetlands. Some of the coal remains as a thin veneer over the original ground surface through which plants can grow. Of the 11,000 cubic yards of coal removed from the wetland, 4,000 were blended into the hillside below the Slate River Road. The rest was wrapped in a geo-grid material to increase its strength and prevent it from sloughing into the wetland and waterway. Topped by road base, the area will continue to serve as a cattle load for local rancher Curtis Allen. While the land revegetates itself, the cattle will be directed by fencing to keep them off the delicate terrain.
“The wetlands will begin to grow back in,” explains Tafi, “because we have restored the hydrology. Now the water can percolate up, whereas before the coal was damming it. Now the water can do what it wants, and do it naturally.”
The project found its seed when the DRMS and CBLT worked together on the Peanut Mine reclamation project in 2007, also a Land Trust-conserved property. One hundred percent of the half-million dollars for the project came from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund, a federal fund collected from severance taxes paid by coal mining companies.
The DRMS contracted wetland ecologist Andy Herb of AlpineEco to create the restoration design. Since this past August, Herb and Tafi, along with a host of excavators and several days’ worth of volunteers from the Crested Butte Community School, Gunnison High School and Western State College, and CCWC have plant-by-plant and seed-by-seed been putting the wetland back together.

The Conservation of Gunsight Bridge
Restoring the wetland would never have been possible if not for the conservation of the land itself through the efforts of the Crested Butte Land Trust, which received the support of local funders to make the original preservation happen.
Funding the property was the Gunnison Valley Land Preservation Board with funds from Gunnison County, the city of Gunnison, Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte specifically designated to protect open space and agricultural heritage of Gunnison County; Great Outdoors Colorado, using a portion of lottery dollars for the protection of Colorado’s open space; and the town of Crested Butte with funds gathered in its 3 percent real estate transfer tax, half of which is designated for the preservation of open space outside the town limits. And finally, 1% for Open Space granted money from customer donations collected by more than 70 participating businesses. In this way, patrons of any 1% for Open Space business can feel proud to have individually contributed to the preservation, and hence restoration, of this land.
From conservation to restoration, the Gunsight Bridge parcel is one of those shining examples of a variety of organizations, volunteers, donors and community members demonstrating when we receive so much, it is also important to give back.
“The restoration project of Gunsight Bridge meets every conservation value of the Crested Butte Land Trust,” says executive director Ann Johnston. “It supports historic grazing practices, protects wildlife habitat and provides free recreation for hundreds of people. It really is a fantastic project.”
Reclamation of the Gunsight Bridge Parcel will be complete within the next few weeks. Come out for a free tour every Thursday at 5 p.m. until the project is done.