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1.0 Introduction <br />The purpose of this document is to review available soil resource data, identify and map <br />individual soil units, and quantify the existence of prime farmland soil units on the Morgan <br />Property located within the perimeter of the New Horizon Mine, Nucla, Colorado. Discussion <br />will include soil survey information from United State Department of Agriculture — National <br />Resource Conservation Service (USDA NRCS) Soil Survey of San Miguel Area, Colorado <br />including parts of Dolores, Montrose, and San Miguel Counties (San Miguel Soil Survey), soil <br />survey data collected on the Nucla East study area completed by ERT, Fort Collins, Colorado in <br />July, 1987 and March 1988(Peabody Soil Survey), and soil survey data collected by <br />Intermountain Resource Inventories Inc., Ridgeway, CO in March 1998 (IRI Soil Survey). <br />The New Horizon Mine, operated by Western Fuels — Colorado, LLC (Western Fuels), consists <br />of 926.06 acres permitted under Department of Reclamation and Mine Safety (DRMS) Permit C- <br />1981 -008 located in Western Montrose County, Colorado. Approximately 110 acres of the <br />permit area is leased from the Morgan Property as part of the open -pit operation. <br />This report provides an assessment of soils data for the Morgan Property with respect to Prime <br />Farmland map units. <br />2.0 Site Description <br />The New Horizon Mine is located approximately 1.5 miles northwest of Nucla, CO, situated in <br />parts of Sec. 1, T46N, RI 6W, Sec. 36, T47N, R1 6W, and Sec. 31, T47N, RI 5W. The Morgan <br />Property is located in Section 1, Township 46 North, Range 16 West (Figure 1). The remainder <br />of the report will be primarily discussing the Morgan Property. <br />The Morgan Property is primarily used for agriculture. Approximately 80 percent of the area was <br />used as irrigated pasture and crop land. The remaining 20 percent is naturally vegetated with <br />sagebrush, pinyon, juniper, gramma grass and other naturally occurring plant species or as home - <br />sites, ponds, rock outcrop or other miscellaneous lands. <br />The geology of the survey area is comprised of reworked alluvial and eolian sediments derived <br />from overlying Cretaceous Dakota Sandstone and Burro Canyon Formation. Dakota Sandstone is <br />comprised primarily of sandstone while the Burro Canyon Formation includes sandstones, shales <br />and conglomerates. <br />The Nucla area has an aridic bordering on an ustic moisture regime (soil moisture that is limited <br />but is present at a time when conditions are suitable for plant growth) and a mesic temperature <br />regime (soil with a mean annual soil temperature between 47° F and 59° F). Mean annual <br />precipitation is 12.6 inches. The mean annual soil temperature is 50° F. The mean annual air <br />Morgan Property Soil Survey Page 1 <br />