2016-01-05_GENERAL DOCUMENTS - C1981035 (3)

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feeling and wants to "fly under the radar." This is not an approach that the Division should facilitate. TR 23 allows an expansion in the production level from 800,000 tons per year to 1,300,000, when the 800,000 ton level was already causing unacceptable impacts that were being regulated at no level of government, and the only analysis of impacts was based upon a 300,000 ton production. Yet somehow TR 23 was supposed to be a "technical revision." TR 24 would add something like 87.3 acres to the permit area. Somehow the Division made a determination under C.R.S. § 2.08.4(2)(b) and (c) that adding 87.3 acres to the existing permit area was an "incidental boundary revision." We respectfully disagree. Our client is a neighbor of this mining operation, as are many other concerned residents, and consider 87.3 acres of land and mineral rights to be a substantial amount. Therefore, we believe that the Division may have erred in these determination and that this submittal by GCC (including TRs 23, 24, 25 and 26) is more properly reviewed as a Permit Revision .2 We ask the Division to review this matter and determine that a Permit Revision is required. The Coal Rules state as follows: "2.08.4 Revisions to a Permit (1) General requirements. A permit revision shall be obtained: (d) For any extensions to the area to be covered by a permit, except for incidental boundary revisions." [emphasis added]. We do not think that an addition of almost 90 acres is an "incidental boundary revision." Technical Revision 24 (TR -24) was submitted on May 5, 2015 and called complete, after additional submittals, on May 15, 2015. TR -24 remains under review at the present time. The Technical Revision as submitted contained substantial and previously undocumented and perhaps irreconcilable changes in the permitted acreage (see La Plata County comment letter dated June 11, 2015 and comments in the DRMS June 14, 2015 Adequacy Review letter) and surface and coal ownership. At the last local land use hearing on this project, the room was packed. The only credible explanation for the paucity of public comment on these TRs is that no one knew about them, which is precisely what happens when the TR process is used, or misused.