Two workshops this week should bring a plan to manage the Animas River through Durango closer to the nitty-gritty phase.
Six focus groups will concentrate on river access, recreation, conservation/habitat, law enforcement, water quality and community education. The sessions will be held at the Durango Community Recreation Center.
Recommendations will lead to a draft of a Durango Animas River Corridor Master Plan.
“The community is absolutely essential to the plan,” Cathy Metz, director of Durango’s parks and recreation department, said Thursday. “Residents don’t have to attend every session to participate, just whenever they can.”
Durango always has overseen use of the Animas River within the city limits, Metz said. But the corridor plan will be the first time guidelines are in writing.
Planning began last summer when more than 400 residents responded to a questionnaire about their interests and concerns regarding the Animas River. The city heard from anglers, kayakers, commercial outfitters, law enforcement, property owners and conservationists.
At public meetings in November, December and January, participants refined ideas about how the river should be preserved and used.
At least one expert will be assigned to each focus group during the workshops Wednesday and Thursday to assure that suggestions are feasible, Metz said. The group on river access will have an engineer and a landscape architect to guide discussions, she said.
Joy Lujan, on loan from the National Park Services’s Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, will be at the workshops. Lujan brought diverse interests together to devise a recreation plan for Lake Nighthorse.
The section of the Animas under discussion covers the 7.5 miles within city limits. The city’s planning area, however, runs for 16.3 miles – from the glider park in the Animas Valley to the confluence of Basin Creek south of the Purple Cliffs.
The alignment of the Animas River Trail is pretty much set, so the trail, which hugs the river, doesn’t figure in current corridor management planning.
Parks and Recreation Department staff planners will use information gathered at the workshops this week to draft a master plan, Metz said. The draft will come back to the community for final approval.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and Natural Lands Preservation Advisory Board will scrutinize the plan and forward it to the City Council, Metz said.
