Winter may have finally shown up in Summit County, but work continues on the Swan River Restoration Project. We wanted to provide you with a couple of updates as we look towards advancing work in 2018:

1. Annual Update to the Summit County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC): One of the conditions of Summit County’s gravel milling permit (Conditional Use Permit) requires annual project updates to the BOCC. The Summit County Open Space and Trails Department (OST) will be providing its second annual update to the BOCC at a worksession scheduled for Tuesday, February 27th at 9:00 a.m. in the Commissioners’ Hearing Room in the County Courthouse in Breckenridge. OST will review accomplishments from 2017 and discuss plans for the 2018 field season including continued gravel removal from the valley. As always, your attendance at these meetings is welcomed. Please do not hesitate to contact OST with any questions, or comments about this meeting. 
2. Grant Funding: Summit County was recently awarded a $31,395 CWCB Watershed Restoration Monitoring Grant. These CWCB grant funds will be applied towards monitoring the performance and evolution of the stream channel and vegetative establishment across the recently completed Reach A restoration site during the next 3 years. This is exciting news, as we are eager to learn from restoration efforts on Reach A and apply those lessons learned towards future restoration activities in the valley.

We'll leave you with a photo of a fish survey conducted in the new channel last October. We are awaiting final results from Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff, but early indications are that the new channel is providing excellent fish habitat! 

Additional information about Swan River Restoration Project is available at RestoreTheSwanRiver.com as well as on the Open Space and Trails Special Projects web page. If you have additional questions about the restoration project, you can contact Summit County Open Space and Trails Director Brian Lorch, or Open Space and Trails Resource Specialist Jason Lederer, or call 970.668.4060.