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EaoconMobil Global Services Page 12 <br />Colony Shale Oil Project <br />ESR Reclamation Studies <br />Weighing Lysimeter Performance 1990-2003 <br />Project No. 353 <br />Haise model, which Wymore presents on pages 63 and 66 of his dissertation, have been used here <br />with actual data from the lysimeter used as input to asses the utility of that model in predicting deep <br />percolation into spent shale piles. However, none of the previous studies included a weighing <br />lysimeter. The inherent difficulties in predicting percolation while relying only on indirect <br />measurements, such as changes in moisture content inferred from discrete measurements, made it <br />cleaz that a weighing lysimeter would probably be needed to reliably assess changes in storage. This <br />conclusion was confirmed in a meeting between Eracon's Colony staff and USDA researchers at that <br />agency's Amarillo research facility in 1987. <br />As will be described in the following section, Dr. Wymore's statements referenced above that <br />water would not be available for deep percolation for most of the year appeaz to be correct. For a flat <br />horizontal plot such as the weighing lysimeter at the ESR plots, percolation appears to escape the root <br />• zone only for a brief period in the spring melt. Summer rainfall is almost totally consumed or runs off. <br />Since the amount of runoff on sloping plots would IikeIy be greater than on the flat lysimeter, the <br />amount of water available for percolation on the sloping faces of a spent shale pile would be even less. <br /> <br />LACHEL FELICE & Associates <br />