Abandoned mine remediation and watershed protection project at the Historic Waldorf Gold Mine in the mountains of Colorado. The project presented an interesting set of challenges, including; access, transport and environmental logistics, maximizing limited onsite resources, maintaining the highest safety standards, and strong stakeholder collaboration and satisfaction. Constructing passive management ponds and an elaborate system of collection and distribution channels in an existing wetland environment required multiple approaches to achieve.

Water exiting the Wilcox Tunnel and into the mines historic workings was collected and diverted for several months to allow the wetlands to drain to the point where equipment could track to areas of construction. The rock-lined collection channels were also used as haulage and transport roads for equipment to minimize damage to existing wetlands. Areas of extreme saturation were embedded with native rock to stabilize it to the point where construction could commence.