Laserfiche WebLink
_, s R. J. Irish <br />Consulting Engineering <br />Geologist, Inc. <br />the right abutment topographically trends approximately parallel to the trend of the adjacent. <br />section of the Arkansas River Valley to the west, end is about 800 to 1000 feet wide. <br />The reservoir, given a maximum water surface elevation of about 7930 feet, would extend <br />northeastward and eastward upstream about 2400 feet. For most of that distance it would be about <br />250 to 300 feet wide. Palley slopes on both sides of the reservoir area are steepl y sloped where <br />bedrock is exposed, but shallowly sloped where the bedrock is blanketed by slopewash and residual <br />soils. <br />SITE GEOLOGY <br />Trout Creek drai ns a sector of the eastern slope of the Arkansas River Valley. That valley <br />topographically evidences the structural extension ofthe Rio Grande Rift,a large graben structure <br />that extends northward from Mexico through west Texas, New Mexico and central Colorado almost <br />to the Wyoming border. In the vicinity of Buena Vista, the down-faulted block that constitutes the <br />graben cuts northward across, and displaces downward, a section of the eastern flank of the <br />Sawatch Mountains uplift. It is bounded on the west by the north-trending faults of the Sawatch <br />fault zone, and on the east by a swarm of north-trending faults that generally are unnsmed. The <br />graben block itself probably is broken by several major, north-trending faults. Itis about 5 to 6 <br />miles wide, end its floor is thought to be about 4000 feet below the present topographic floor of <br />the Arkansas Valley. Faulting to form the rift zone end the graben was initiated in the early <br />Miocene Period about 20 to 25 million years ago, and fault movement is judged by some geologists <br />to continue sporadically into the present time. <br />the graben has been partly refilled bystream-deposited sediments, mainly the interbedded <br />clays, silts, sands and gravels of the Miocene/Pliocene-age { 25 million to 2 million years ago) <br />Dry Union Formation. These sediments locally are blanketed by alluvial fan soils deposited mainly <br />by streams draining eastward from the Sawatch Range, but also by morainal end outwesh <br />sediments derived from glaciers that repeatedl y extended out iota the Arkansas River Valley during <br />the Ice Age from those valleys. The last of those glaciers melted away about 8000 to 10,000 years <br />ego. In fact, the granitic bedrock ridge that forms the right abutment of the planned Trout Creek <br />Dam is covered by glacial outwesh and glacier-derived alluvial soils of Nebraskan(?)-age {about <br />1 to 2 million years ago} to within about 700 feet of the planned damsite. <br />At the damsite and within the reservoir area, which lie structurally on the eastern flank of the <br />Sawatch Uplift east of the graben breach of that flank, granodiorite constitutes bedrock. A strong, <br />hard member of the granite family of intrusive rocks, it faces the gorge cliffs of the Trout Creek <br />Valley at the damsite and most of the valley slopes that would be inundated by the reservoir wafer. <br />Locally, however, it is veneered across the reservoir-bounding slopes by slopewash end residual <br />