Next summer, the U.S. Forest Service will perform a flood study in popular camping areas in the South Fork Mineral Creek drainage near Silverton.
As part of the Forest Service’s “5-Year Program of Work” for the San Juan National Forest, officials will “evaluate what part, if any, is in the 100-year flood plain and decommission what is determined to be in the flood plain.”
Spokeswoman Ann Bond said crews plan to survey South Mineral drainage, which includes dozens of dispersed (free, undeveloped) campsites as well as the South Mineral Campground – about nine miles west of Silverton on Forest Service Road 585 – in summer 2017. They will collect and model topographic survey data for camping areas.
The 26 campsites at South Mineral are maintained by the Forest Service within the San Juan National Forest, and have about 6,500 visitors over the summer season. Many other campers stay at the dispersed sites, many of which are near the creek, Bond said.
The Forest Service wants to know if the area would flood in a sustained storm, or storms combined with high runoff, Bond said. It is part of an ongoing effort to ensure campgrounds and dispersed sites are not in floodplains, she said.
“We want to know where that floodplain is,” Bond said.
Lawrence Lujan, a spokesman for the Forest Service office in Denver, said there are no warning signs about flooding at the site, but if studies prove there is a need, the agency would consider installing them.
Although others have raised concerns that the campground is just two miles downstream from the Bandora Mine and could be in the path of a blowout, Bond said the Forest Service study has nothing to do with the mine.
Bill Simon, a retired coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group, has voiced concern for years that the inactive Bandora Mine could blow out and flood the campground within a matter of minutes.
This story has been updated to clarify that the Forest Service survey is concerned with floodplains and not with the Bandora Mine.