2022-07-01_REVISION - M1982155 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Purpose and Intent of Technical Revision #3 The following Revised Mining and Reclamation Plans are a revision and modernization of the currently effective plans contained in Amendment 2 approved in 1986 when this operation was being conducted under the ownership of Cooley Gravel Company. Some provisions in that plan have been changed because the current operation owner and permit holder, Schmidt Construction Company,does not wish to operate the rest of the pit in the way envisioned by Cooley Gravel. There are actually few substantive changes that have an impact on how the operation will be reclaimed after mining,but these changes alter how the material is mined. Whether the site is mined as Cooley envisioned or as Schmidt,the current permit holder,wishes has only minor influences on the reclamation of the site. Also, there are aspects of the deposit itself that were not known to Cooley Gravel but now have been discovered that influence the approach to efficiently mining the gravel. There are also legal right-of-way and SWSP issues that have been further developed from what they were in 1986 and these need to be included in the permit. In particular,the direction of mining is completely reversed in this plan from the way Cooley wished to mine it.It also eliminates the concept of phases and considers the mining of the main operation as being a continuous process without time constraints or specific locations of operation at more or less specific time periods. It has been found that such devices simply do not work because the market is far too variable over time to predict specific time periods as to where mining will occur and when. In other words,market demand determines the schedule and the amount of material to be mined over any particular time period. It will appear that there are new sections in these exhibits that were not there before.That is not the case,except in a few instances where new information needs to be introduced into the plan.Many of these apparent new sections in the Mining Plan were lifted directly out of the Cooley Reclamation Plan because,in Schmidt's opinion, those processes and procedures are actually a part of mining and not necessarily a part of reclamation. For example, seeding topsoil stockpiles is now contained in the mining plan because topsoil stockpiles are created as a part of mining and not a part of reclamation. Cooley's position was that topsoil salvage is a reclamation process while Schmidt considers that to be a mining process. These changes also allows on the ground activity to proceed more sequentially. Of course transferring paragraphs from the Reclamation Plan to the Mining Plan can make the Reclamation Plan look different when really not much is changed in that plan as a result of this Technical Revision. The Reclamation Plan now much more specifically includes only things that are reclamation actions. Any linkage back to the Mining Plan is a result of needing to repeat a few mining aspects to make the reclamation action more understandable without needing to direct the reader back to the other plan. One very significant plan change includes mining from the north to south to increase mining efficiency,reduce the cost of mining,and maintain better control of drainage during mining. In a word, Schmidt considers Cooley's south to north approach to be a very expensive and highly inefficient way to mine the southern portions of the operation and is environmentally questionable. Some new discoveries regarding the deposit must be accounted for in the mining now. One rather large and one much smaller"silt pockets"have been discovered that Cooley did not know were there. These could have significant impacts on the quality of the aggregate produced.Also,Cooley apparently did not know that there are localized perched aquifers under the gravel that need to be taken into account during the mining.Where Cooley looked was apparently dry and so they erroneously assumed the entire area was dry. -i-