Watershed Preservation
Clear Creek and Clear Creek West Fork Watershed
Clear Creek and Clear Creek West Fork Watershed
Clear Creek and Clear Creek West Fork Watershed
Silver Plume’s watershed is within the Republican Mountain slopes. Brown Gulch and Cherokee Gulch flow through the property and play a pivotal role in Silver Plume’s watershed. Brown Gulch, a tributary of Clear Creek, supplies essential water sources for wildlife such as bighorn sheep, lynx, turkey, moose, elk, mountain lion, black bear and boreal toad along its course, The Colorado School of Mines recently conducted a study on Brown Gulch's water quality and identified the uppermost section—home to the 7:30 Mine on the Taylor-Kennedy property—as critical to maintaining good water quality in the creek and for Silver Plume’s water source. However, this part of the gulch is also the most unstable due to the prior mining activity.
Avalanche Areas North of Silver Plume
Clear Creek and Clear Creek West Fork Watershed
Clear Creek and Clear Creek West Fork Watershed
Acquiring the Taylor-Kennedy property would allow future
Silver Plume and Clear Creek County budgets to focus on stabilizing the mine tailings, safeguarding the watershed, and protecting the water quality of the Town and Clear Creek itself, which serves a large portion of the Front Range.The following downstream water rights holders of Clear Creek’s water have provided us with letters of support: The City of Arvada, The City of Westminster.
There are several avalanche chutes in our target area, as depicted in the map above. Any type of development on the mountainside would definitely be at risk from avalanche activity.