This week’s round of public hearings on recreation at Lake Nighthorse – scheduled today and Wednesday in Durango – aims to end with a plan for opening the area for use.

The lake is off-limits to the public until a recreation plan and someone to manage it is in place.

“This isn’t the final step,” Katie Nelson with Durango-based DHM Design, the project manager, said Monday. “By the end of Wednesday, we hope to have consensus on water recreation and cost estimates for maintenance and operation of an initial phase of recreation.”

The draft plan will allow the sponsor, the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District, to start fundraising, Nelson said. The water district tackled the job of devising a recreation plan in early 2009 when State Parks said it had no money for such a project.

An information session in November started the planning process. It was followed by a forum to draw opinions from the public and then two specific-issue workshops. The design workshops today and Wednesday build on the earlier work.

On-water activities became an early point of contention, pitting the powerboat/water-skiing crowd against people more into fishing, sailboats and canoes. Opinions apparently have softened, and there appears to be an acceptance that a solution must benefit the larger community, Nelson said.

Jeff Cerjan, an acoustics engineer with Hankard Environmental in Littleton, will attend the design workshops both days as an expert on such issues as decibels, sound frequency and types of motors.

The Bureau of Recreation, which owns the Animas-La Plata Project, will have a water recreation specialist from Salt Lake City in Durango for the two days of design workshops.

“We are by no means done,” Nelson said. “The design workshops are a midpoint.”

Refining the draft master plan will run into the spring, Nelson said.

Five teams will work on different areas of the master plan, Nelson said. The assignments are: trail and campgrounds; water recreation; shoreline recreation; interpretation and education; management and financing.

Joy Lujan, a National Park Service planner on loan for two years, is coordinating public participation in the process.

A number of agencies must review a final draft, and the Bureau of Reclamation must sign off on it, Nelson said. The process must follow guidelines of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The cost of a master plan is estimated at up to $200,000, and developing a full menu of recreation options would cost around $20 million, plus ongoing maintenance and operation costs.

Lake Nighthorse is being created by filling a basin southwest of Bodo Industrial Park with water from the Animas River. The 120,000-acre-foot lake (projected to be full this year) is part of the Animas-La Plata Project to store water for three Native American tribes and nontribal agencies in Colorado and New Mexico.

daler@durangoherald.com