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NEWLIN CREEK Willard Douglass Corley, Jr. <br />October 27, 2014 <br />Newlin Creek is an ephemeral stream that crosses a portion of the Southfield Mine. This stream <br />traverses in a southwest to northeast direction with minimal meandering. It has cut a stream bed valley <br />approximately 150 to 300 feet wide. Map 1 shows the location of the Creek in relationship to the coal <br />mine workings including the areas of the mine in which the pillars were removed (pillared or pillaring). <br />Newlin Creek crosses the Southfield Mine for a distance of about 8500 feet of which about 4055 feet is <br />pillared area.' This mining occurred over a period of about 1980 to late 1990. The mine was closed in <br />2001.Since the underground mining beneath Newlin Creek there has been an observed change in the <br />annual flow patterns of Newlin Creek. Particularly in the past five years the water flow has been <br />observed to suddenly disappear into the ground at various positions along the stream bed. Energy Fuels <br />(EFCI) and The Corley Company (TCC) agree that the stream flow disappears, but the cause of this <br />stream flow loss has been debated by EFCI and TCC. EFCI asserts that the flow disappearance is simply <br />the result of saturation of the very deep and widealluvium of the stream bed and that this phenomenon <br />has been occurring for many years, probably before their mining was initiated. TCC believes that water <br />loss is more recent and that the loss is the result of disturbance of the stream bed from subsidence <br />caused by the numerous pillared panels of the Southfield Mine. TCC believes that the subsidence <br />caused fracturing of the overburden of the pillared areas with the pre- mining formations becoming <br />cracked and fissured with channels for water to infiltrate into the voids of the old mines in seams above <br />Southfield Mine and possibly into the voids of Southfield Mine. The old mines include Zenith, Liberty, <br />Canon National, and Rex Carbon .2Thepurpose of this paper is to discuss the evidence for subsidence of <br />Newlin Creek and the evidence for the lack of the very deep and wide alluvium surface layer claimed by <br />EFCI. <br />Map 1 shows the outline of the Southfield Mine in yellow.'The numerous pillared panels are polygons <br />outlined in red.'Subsidence monitoring points are a triangle symbol. Black triangle points are above <br />pillared areas or within the angle of draw; all of these monitoring points have shown subsidence . 3 <br />Green triangle points are above solid coal; none of these monitoring points above solid coal have shown <br />subsidence .3 There is only one subsidence monitoring point called NC Reset for Newlin Creek <br />monitoring. It is above a large solid pillar and this monitoring point did not have subsidence; NC Reset <br />monitoring point is too far east to effectively monitor Newlin Creek for subsidence over the pillared <br />panels. The two Newlin Creek surface water flow monitoring points are shown as NC 1 and NC 2. <br />