BOARD00962

• Board Meeting Date: 11/10/1953
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

270

"The areas drained by the Colorado ~iverand the
Gunnison River water sheds have within their
areas the largest, known coal reserve in the
United States. This region i~ludes Gunnison
Montrose, Delta, Mesa, Pitkin, Garfield, Rio'
Blanco and Moffatt Counties, and co~prises an
area of approximately 6,000 square miles, ac-
cording to an estimate recorded by the Colorado
Coal Resources Board. There is existent in
this area 200,500,000,000 tons of,coal accord-
ing to the report of John W. Vanderweld, which
includes 75,000,000,000 tons at a depth of less
than 3,000 feet. As a matter of fact, this sup-
ply of coal, according to these figures, con-
sists of 10.1 percent of the nations total re-
serve and 5% of the worlds reserves. This es-
timate is based on a survey of Professor Lee
and later studies have disclosed there is vastly
more coal than the figures I have just given.
The reason for this is that the coal areas are
only shown to extend a distance of three miles
but after the compil~tion of the Lee reports
drilling operations have shown they extend at
least 30 miles, making the known coal deposits
at least ten times the figure I have quoted.

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This area is al~ost entirely undeveloped in-
sofar as mining operations are concerned. Vit-
tually all of the coal in the area belongs to
the U. S. Government. In the Delta area we
have the Rollins and Somerset districts. The
Rollins district contains in excess of two
billion tons of coal. The Somerset district,
which adjoins the Rollins District to the east
contains in excess of five billion tons of coal.
Considering that drilling tests in the Rifle
area have disclosed the presence of the same
beds which are visible in the Gunnison River
Drainage area means that the amount of coal
in this area to be practically inexhaustable.

The Army Engineers have studied ~his area and
their report prepared in May 1949 discloses there
is sufficient coal available in the Delta area to
supply 68 to 83 hydrogenation plants each with a
30,000 barrel daily capacity for forty years.
The coals in this area have a b.t.u. rating of
in excess of 11,900. As a matter of fact of
seventeen samples recently run fifteen had a
b.t.u. rating of more than 12,500. iVIany tests have
been run on the coal in this area by the U. S.
Bureau of Mines and considerable amount of work
has been done by L. C. Karrick as reported in
the U. S. Bureau of Mines, bulletin No. 249-.

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