2020-03-16_PERMIT FILE - M2020008

Home Browse Search

Mined land Reclamation Board/Div. Reclamation Mining and Safety March 12, 2020 Page 2 amount of water (gpm,cfs,etc.) to be discharged into the ditch on our property . Do they even care or know if the ditch is large enough to carry their water without over flowing or causing damage to others property. While looking at the water issues for this gravel pit there are some areas that need to be addressed. The rerouting of the water on the property to a ditch along the perimeter of the property within the 25 foot buffer is problematic in that there is going to be a stockpile of soil 24 feet at the base in the buffer strip leaving only 1 foot for a ditch between the property boundary and the stockpile. There is no room for maintenance of the ditch by machine or by hand without getting on the adjacent property. Is a 1 foot ditch sized large enough for the normal tail waters on the property?The application pictured water is a sump that holds water to soak in and does not flow completely across the property allowing water to spread and soak after the sump.The water flow in this 1 foot ditch as designed will flow on to the adjacent property in the event of a plug or ditch bank wash out. In a storm event will the runoff from the soil piles flow into the ditch plugging it and flow water and mud onto the adjacent property? How will you clean this up from your property?This event would put the operator in violation of his stormwater permit .Would the applicant be able to secure a stormwater permit with the design as purposed in a 25 foot buffer? I don't think so if the water quality control div. sees and visualizes this as built on the ground. The application states in 8.5.2 Water loss with mined aggregate: a production rate of 200,000 tons a year or 16,667 tons per month is the calculation used for water leaving in the gravel. Yet there is 3million tons to be mined on the property for a duration of 5-7 years. At 200,000 tons a year 5years is imillion tons and 7 years is 1.4 million tons. What happens to the remaining 1.6 million tons? The application does not say there are any water rights with the property. There is going to be a pond that will have evaporation of the surface that will require an augmentation plan at the end of mining. Assuming a water contract would be required for the whole year of evaporation noted in the tables as 179.87(AF).The water contract may be a substantial amount of money to service. So what will happen if the applicant decides at the end of mining it is more cost effective for him to pump the water into the tailwater ditch in perpetuity. I remind you this discharge water is crossing our property as stated earlier in this letter and now will never stop infiltrating into our gravel pit and property. The sign posted for public notice is not readable from the frontage road. It is a white paper 11"by 17" on a piece of plywood hung on the gate. When driving by it looks like a message sign like no trespassing or other you normally see on farmer fences not a public notice. My property is adjacent to this property and impacted by pumping water to the ditch on our property we should have been notified by mail. We were not sent a letter.