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<br />Rockcastle Coal Co. <br />Permit Revoked <br />C-81-039 <br />Grassy Gap Mine <br />8/24/04 <br />Special focus partial inspection <br />Mitch Rollings, OSM <br />Janet Binns, DMG <br />Grassy Gap is one of the forfeited mining operations that are the subject to an offsite <br />impacts special focus review for bond forfeiture sites during EY04-05. The purpose of <br />this inspection was to determine whether or not the mine site conditions were causing <br />observable offsite impacts on adjacent lands. <br />General conditions: <br />There were six pit areas during the mining operations. Pit 4 had actually received some <br />Phase II bond release prior to forfeiture. <br />Roads to the pits are in fairly good condition. Gullies exist on some of the roads, but they <br />are still passable. Visual observations indicated that most of any sediment that would <br />have ]eft the disturbed areas would probably have come from the road systems. <br />Considering the mining areas as a whole, gullies were most pervasive on these features. <br />Also, some of the road cut slopes were rather barren in regard to vegetation. <br />The mining areas had been backfilled and graded to eliminate all highwalls. The <br />reclaimed landscape topography appears to blend well with the surrounding undisturbed <br />areas. <br />All but two of the ponds, Ponds 4 and 5, and all temporary diversions have been <br />removed. Pond 5 had a slow discharge of clear water. Vegetation around the pond was <br />good. There were no signs of instability. <br />Revegetation has been fairly successful with regard to stabilizing the soil surface. Rills <br />were evident, but we did not observe any fresh, unstable gu-ies. Accumulated sediments <br />or exacerbated erosion was not observed offsite. <br />Grassy Gap exhibited no observable offsite impacts. <br />