La Plata project
MSI is monitoring water quality in watersheds surrounding the La Plata Project, which aims to explore our mineral rich region and uncover copper occurrences in the La Plata Mountains. The streams we will be focusing on for this project will be the La Plata River and the East Mancos River.
To learn more about the La Plata Project through Metallic Minerals, click here.
To learn more about how the community is responding, click here.
How can you get involved?
Volunteers can get involved by participating in the collection of water quality samples. We have five different sites associated with this project which can be viewed on the map below. Four of them are located on the La Plata River watershed and one in the East Mancos watershed. By expanding the linked map you can look through all the selected sites for the project.
Sampling events
1st event and volunteer training: June 17th, 2025
2nd event: August 4th-August 8th, 2025
3rd event: October 27th-31st, 2025
If interested in getting involved, please email Haley at haley@mountainstudies.org
Why is MSI involved?
MSI has been approached by Metallic Minerals as well as concerned community members who have a shared goal of transparency of water quality data collection that can be used to understand current conditions and be better poised to detect and evaluate potential environmental impacts if mining occurs in the future. A core goal is to get community members involved with their local watersheds, which is why we have added this project to our suite of citizen science projects.
In preparation of this citizen science project MSI hosted a stakeholder meeting with downstream users to gather input on where samples should be collected and what water quality parameters should be assessed in this participatory monitoring program.
MSI and stakeholders decided to collect water quality samples during three sample events in 2025, strategically distributed across differing hydrologic conditions. Interested MSI volunteers go through a training with MSI staff and are then assigned a sample site which they visit during the sample period. Volunteers take their water samples directly to Green Analytical Laboratories (GAL) for testing, and then GAL sends the results directly to MSI. Once all data has been collected, MSI staff will compile the data and make it available to the public on this webpage for local stakeholders, community members, and Metallic Minerals. Our goal is to be an independent, objective party that can continue to provide meaningful data to anyone who is interested in their local watersheds. In addition to providing the raw water quality lab results, we plan to share interpretation of those results at the end of 2025 once all three water quality sampling events have been completed. We will publish that interpretive report here on our website.
Participatory Monitoring Water Quality Data
To meet our goal of transparency of water quality data, the compiled water quality data collected through our participatory monitoring program is available below and linked as an excel document HERE. These data characterize current water quality conditions in 2025. If mining occurs, future post-mining observations can be compared to these 2025 baseline observations to detect and evaluate potential water quality impacts.
