By the La Plata and San Juan County commissioners
The Hermosa Creek watershed is treasured by residents of La Plata and San Juan counties. Whether fishing the creek’s outstanding waters, exploring backcountry trails on a mountain bike or motorcycle, hunting deer and elk in its lush forests or car camping with the family, the Hermosa watershed offers something for everyone.
But its most critical contribution is its water – clean, high-quality water that dilutes the mineral-laden Animas, improves the quality of our drinking and agricultural water and supports a thriving cutthroat-trout fishery.
These values brought together the Hermosa Creek Workgroup in 2008, a community-based group of residents who spent nearly six years discussing what they cared about in the watershed and how best to protect it. It was an open and transparent process and resulted in a set of recommendations that led to legislation being introduced in Congress by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, both of whom rightly trumpeted the carefully crafted agreement and community consensus.
Along with designating the Hermosa Creek Wilderness Area, the legislation would establish a Special Management Area, with priority direction to the U.S. Forest Service to manage it to protect the natural watershed. The collaborative approach to achieving consensus among the stakeholders – and more broadly across the community – was the hallmark of the effort, reflecting our communities’ values and making them stronger in the process. That successful approach even made it possible to resolve some issues outside of the Hermosa Creek Watershed, such as an agreement to avert a pending closure of Molas Pass near Silverton to snowmobilers.
Because of its foundation in broad community consensus, the Hermosa legislation became one of the top candidates for enactment by Congress in the current session. Bennet, Tipton and their staffs have worked diligently and through long hours to maintain an agreement that preserves the original community consensus and has the ability to pass both houses of Congress. The current version, passed on Nov. 13 by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources – and on Thursday by the House of Representatives – includes the designation of the Hermosa Creek Wilderness and the Hermosa Creek Special Management Area, meant to protect critical lands within our watershed while also allowing for continued careful management of recreation through community cooperation.
We thank Bennet and Tipton for working together to keep the Hermosa Bill in a form our communities can support. A bipartisan, community-based bill is rare these days – thanks to them both for not allowing Washington politics to undermine what local residents have worked so hard to achieve. We appreciate their ongoing hard work to see the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act through to its successful passage in this session. We stand ready to support them in achieving this long-sought objective.
This was signed by La Plata County Commissioners Gwen Lachelt, Bobby Lieb and Julie Westendorff, and by San Juan County (Colorado) Commissioners Scott Fetchenhier, Ernest Kuhlman and Peter McKay.
