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• <br />ExxonMobil Global Services <br />Colony Shale Oil Project <br />ESR Reclamation Studies <br />Weighing Lysimeter Performance 1990-2003 <br />Project No. 353 <br />Page 3 <br />projects had considerably smaller surface impacts, albeit potentially more complex <br />hydrogeological impacts. <br />3.1.2 Protection of Surface and Groundwater <br />Protection of surface and groundwater resources in Colorado is by statute the <br />responsibility of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE, <br />formerly Colorado Department of Health, CDOH). However, the surface and groundwater <br />hydrology aspects of shale oil projects permitted in the in the 1970s and 1980s were for the <br />most part covered by previsions within the MLRB permits. In the case of Colony, CDOH <br />had input into MI,RB's pemutting process. Later memoranda-of-understanding (MOLn <br />between those two agencies in the mid-1980s better defined the division of their <br />• responsibilities. The demazcation line seems to have been that if a water discharge pernut was <br />required, either a surface discharge such as a CPDES permit or a groundwater discharge, that <br />permit would be the responsibility of and issued by the CDPHE (then CDOH). Colony was in <br />fact required to obtain at least one such surface water discharge pemrit because the <br />sedimentation control plan in the mining pemut issued by the MLRB created sedimentation <br />ponds that were viewed as "point sources", thereby requiring a discharge pemrit from CDOH. <br />The focus of this system was in fact storm water runoff from areas disturbed by constnrction <br />on the site, not for water that might come into contact with the spent shale pile nor any other <br />industrial wastewater. Since then, any industrial activity of this magnitude would require as a <br />minimum a "stormwater permit" issued by CDPHE, even if the runoff could be managed to <br />have no contact with the spent shale. But in the 1970s an eazly 1980s, the issues relating to <br />spent shale pile runoff quality and quantity, and potential pile leachate into groundwater <br />aquifers, were directly addressed in the MLRB mining pemut, with appropriate input during <br />the pemutting process from the CDOH (CDPHE today). L` a discharge of surface or <br />groundwater was anticipated, the pernvt for those discharges would probably be the <br />responsibility of the CDOH (CDPHE). <br />LAC`I~L FELICE & Associates <br />