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Rug 28 98 10:25a Maxine Stewart 303-239-8257 p,2 <br />• • <br />These incidents were first brought to my attention shortly before I called you <br />yesterday. MY operators did not feel that the loss of fresh water was a <br />reportable incident. I believe that any loss of containment is a reportable <br />incident, and this policy is now firmly established with all operators and <br />contractors. The first incident was the result of using the eldsting weathered <br />pipe, and the second the result of not completey closing a valve associated with <br />the diversion of the fresh water from the Hazel A edit to aid in the compaction of <br />soils in the dam being constructed for the new tailings pond facility. <br />You have on file the lest two quarters of water quality data from our site <br />including the water associated with this release. This water quality is excellent <br />and in our opinion, there has been no adverse environmental impact because of <br />this release. <br />SITE STATUS <br />The mill site is undergoing a period of restoration and construction and is not <br />currently operable. Therefore, there are no solid materials, or process waters, <br />(with the exception of the thickener tank contents and old mill tailings in the <br />pond) and consequently there has been no loss of containment . The only 'flout <br />in the system is that of fresh water for makeup water. All ore that was left in the <br />crushing and storage system has been removed and staged for the previous <br />operators to haul away. This ore is the subject of an on-going litigation among <br />several of the previous operators. ITEC is not a party to any litigation, and does <br />not desire to be. Therefore, we have notified al( of the parties making a claim to <br />this ore, that it is stockpiled and available for pick up. <br />As promised in an earlier communication regarding our quarterly water quality <br />monitoring, we are in the process of decommissioning the Hazel A edit from the <br />previous operators' "overflow water management system°. We are dewatering <br />the Hazel A edit, by transferring this water to our fresh water make-up system so <br />that we may then clean out the remaining tailing sands from the previous <br />operator. We have disconnected the piping associated with the pump back <br />system from the Hazel A to the old tailings pond. This piping was rerouted to the <br />fresh water make up system for the mill, with a diversion pint installed to a fire <br />hose to supply compaction water to the dam. <br />Yesterday, during construction of the new dam, we discovered a system of <br />buried pipes and a °master" valve, that we are still trying to trace and <br />understand. We now believe that this system was associated with the original <br />decant system for the tailings pond, although vre can find nothing of record. <br />Prior to this time, we were aware of one decant pipe, near our pumping station in <br />the pond. It now appears that there were several decant pipes that were <br />intentionally broken aff and that they were routed and could be transferced to the <br />