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Introduction <br />At the request of Mr. George V. Patterson, General Mine Manager of the Energy Fuels Coal Inc. <br />(EFCI), Southfield Mine located approximately eight miles south of Florence, Fremont County, <br />Colorado, various previously reclaimed areas located at the Southfield Mine and Southfield <br />Loadout areas were sampled for the second consecutive year of Phase III final bond release in <br />2014. This bond release revegetation sampling effort was performed in August and September <br />2014 by IME of Yampa, Colorado and Mergen Ecological Delineations, Inc. of Colorado <br />Springs, Colorado. Three reclaimed areas located at the Southfield Mine site and one reclaimed <br />area located at the Southfield Loadout site were sampled. The corresponding Southfield Mine <br />Refuse Pile, Southfield Mine New Portal and Old Portal Reference Areas were also sampled. <br />This revegetation monitoring effort was prepared with the intention of satisfying the reclamation <br />monitoring requirements for the second year's reclamation monitoring requirements for the <br />Phase III final bond release sampling of these reclaimed areas. <br />The locations of the three Phase III Reclamation Blocks and three currently approved Reference <br />Areas for the Southfield Mine are shown on Map 1, Southfield Mine - 2014 Reclamation <br />Study Area Map, Map 20 Loadout Reference Area - 2014 Transect Location Map and Map <br />21, Loadout Reclamation Monitoring Map. The locations of the areas sampled in this <br />evaluation were taken from the Southfield Mine Permit Maps and the Southfield Mine Annual <br />Reclamation Report Maps. <br />The author of this report, Mr. Kent Crofts of IME, who has conducted numerous previous <br />vegetation sampling efforts at the Southfield Mine and Southfield Loadout site since 1987 on <br />numerous mine sites in Colorado in the past 36 years. Mr. Crofts performed all of the field work <br />relating to the Southfield Mine Refuse Pile areas the Vento Portal Reclamation, the New Portal <br />Reference Area and the Southfield Loadout areas. Assisting in the IME field work portion of this <br />work was Mr. Benito Garcia -Felix, who acted as field recorder and who summarized most of the <br />plant cover field data sheets. Laboratory assistance was provided by Ms. Loraine Crofts, who <br />weighted the plant samples and summarized the forage production field data sheets. <br />The vegetation sampling of the Corley Reclamation along with the Old Mine Portal at the <br />Southfield Mine site was performed by Mr. Daryl Mergen. Mr. Mergen has been involved in <br />vegetation sampling efforts at the Southfield Mine for approximately 10 years and in other areas <br />of the western United States for almost 25 years. <br />Methods <br />Maps, in both electronic and hard paper format of the various reclamation blocks and the <br />reference areas were supplied by Mr. Patterson, who also delineated to the revegetation <br />sampling crews, the exact extent of these reclaimed areas in the field. The specific sampling <br />methodologies used in this evaluation are those found in the Southfield Mine Permit, the <br />Division's "Guidelines with Land Use and Vegetation Requirements of the Colorado <br />Mined Land Reclamation Board for Coal Mining" issued in June of 1988 and in the <br />