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III. COMMENTS -COMPLIANCE Below are comments on the inspection. The comments include discussion of observations made during the inspection. Comments also describe any enforcement actions taken during the inspection and the facts or evidence supporting the enforcement action. This was a partial inspection of the CCMC Mine for the month of July, 1996. The focus of this inspection was to look at revegetation and the reference area, as well as to accompany representatives of Greystone who were on site conducting vegetation studies in preparation for an anticipated request for Phase II bond release. The weather was hot and dry. Grasses on the reclaimed site were still green. There were very few seed heads present on cool season grasses as a result of grazing earlier this year. This made species identification difficult but, it was clear that several species of cool season grasses are well-established. Grass on the reference area was beginning to dry out. The mine site was reportedly grazed during the month of May, in an attempt to encourage establishment of warm season grasses. It appears that side oats grama, blue grama, and some Indian ricegrass is getting established on the site. There were few if any warm season grasses on the site three years ago. Continued use of controlled early season grazing will hopefully encourage more diversity of warm and cool season grasses. Greystone estimated vegetative cover on the site by making observations with an optical point frame. Two observations were made at one meter intervals along 50-meter transects. Two meter wide belt transects along the cover transects were used to estimate woody plant density. Transects were located by pacing into the reclaimed area and oriented in random irections. r is not apparent that transects were randomly located by this methodology. This needs to be kept in mind when the data from the study is evaluated. The statistical analyses typically performed on vegetation data in bond release requests assume that data is normally distributed and randomly generated. The operator is strongly encouraged to ensure that transects are randomly located on maps prior to conducting field studies. Failure to do so introduces the possibility that field data will be biased by the sampler. Grasses are well established on the site and litter is just beginning to accumulate. Seeding rows are still evident on nearly all of the mine site. I would estimate there is more bare ground than vegetative cover. However, there is little, if any sign of sheet or rill erosion. The drainage channel through the center of the site has sediment deposition in it but, this material probably came from upstream and off site. The predominant grasses on the site were thickspike, and other wheatgrasses. Smooth brome, blue grama, side oats grama, Indian ricegrass and isolated specimens of other grasses were also present. Winterfat was becoming well established on portions of the site. These shrubs were mostly 8-24 inches tall and appeared to be very vigorous. Yellow and white sweet clovers were present in considerable numbers in some areas, although the plants had not grown very large this year. There were very few fortis evident at this time of year.