PERMFILE41904

• Permit No: M2004067
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 8/19/2005
• Doc Name: 2nd Adequacy Response
• From: Banks and Gesso LLC
• To: DMG
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

MMRR Quarry, M-2004-067
Response to June 30 Adequacy Review (as amended)
August 19, 2005
Page 19
Exhibit M -Other Permits and Licenses
41. Colorado Land Reclamation Act for the Extraction of Construction Materials (CLRA)
regulation 1.4.1(5)(d) requires that you state that you have 'applied for all necessary approvals
from local government.' In your adequacy response of March 23, 2005, and your counsel's
March 16, 2005 memorandum regarding the special use review (SUR) process and the highway
access permit process, you have acknowledged that you will need to obtain these permits prior to
beginning mining operations within your proposed permit area. Gilpin County has indicated in a
letter from Tony Peterson and the county's attorney that you have not yet initiated the SUR
process, that the highway access permit you obtained from the Colorado Department of
Transportation has expired, and that Gilpin County now has authority to issue this permit.
Pursuant to the requirement of CLA Rule 1.4.1(5)(d), please address whether you are seeking an
SUR permit and a highway access permit from Gilpin County.
In accordance with standard practices in the construction materials industry, the
applicant in this case elected to pursue a Reclamation Permit with the Division of
Minerals and Geology prior to resolving land use status at the local government
level. This approach has been common since the adoption of the Construction
Materials Act, which superceded the requirement of the general Mined Land
Reclamation Act (C.R.S. 34-32-101, et seq.) that local government approvals be
obtained prior to issuance of a DMG permit. To our knowledge, this is the first
case to employ Rule 1.4.1(5)(d) as an impediment to the election of various
permitting sequences.
With added emphasis, Rule 1.4.1(5)(d) reads:
All application forms shall contain the following information... a statement
that the Applicant has applied for all necessary approvals from local
government.
To the left of this text, the Rules promulgated by the Mined Land Reclamation
Board cite C.R.S. 34-32.5-110(1)(a)(VIII) as authority for Rule 1.4.1(5)(d). The
referenced statute pertains to 110 Limited Impact Operations, and the application
form fora 110 Limited Impact Operation accordingly contains a Certification
(Numeral 1 on Page 6 of the application form) that states, "All necessary
approvals from local government have been applied for."
The application form fora 112 Regular Operation does not contain this
certification (see Page 7 of the 112 application form). The absence of this
certification is logical since no similar statutory authority exists for 112
applications and the Construction Materials Act specifically modified the
provisions of the Reclamation Act that were previously held to require prior
application for and approval of mining operations by local governments.
The instruction of Rule 1.4.1(5) is that the Division of Minerals and Geology is
required to produce application forms with certain content. The applicant in this
case filled out the application form supplied by the agency to the best of its ability
and provided all certifications required by that form. Rule 1.4.1(5) does not place