Chris as usual you are on top of things. I was thinking of this exact post after reading some of the comments above. In the 90's guys would fill their jugs at Cumbres at a pipe located south of the section house and on the engineers side below the spout I believe. I was up there once with Gerald Blea and he talked about how great the water was. This was in 1993.
My own personal story, is in 1956 as a kid we stayed at the Ah! Wilderness Guest Ranch on the Silverton Line, and regularly drank from streams that fed into the Animas. We were told if it was moving water it was okay. Later read on this board about how bad the Animas River is because of all the heavy metal sediment that flows there. Looks can be deceiving I guess!!
Greg