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"D" Seam Longwall Subsidence Page 9 August 17, 1998 <br />MINING ENVIRONMENT <br />The planned location of the sixteen "D" Seam longwall panels <br />is shown on Figure 1 and Plate 11. The "D" Seam outcrop and five <br />overburden depth contours are shown; 2500-ft, 2000-ft, 1500-f t, <br />1000-ft and 500-ft. Longwall mining will proceed from the maximum <br />depth starter rooms at the north end of all planned panels, #1 - <br />#16, toward the "D" Seam outcrop to the final shield recovery rooms <br />at the south end of the panels. The recovery rooms will be <br />isolated from the "D" Seam Main Entry by minimum 200-foot thick <br />barrier pillars, as shown on Plate 11. There are no planned <br />connections between the "D" Seam workings and any existing or <br />planned Sanborn Creek Mine workings. <br />The drill hole interburden lithology data provided was broken <br />down into the proportions of sandstone, shale and coal and was <br />presented in Table 2. The lithologic distribution in the <br />interburden is variable. However, sandstone is the predominant <br />lithology present in the interburden. Sandstone is the most <br />favorable lithology for multiple seam mining, which is the case for <br />the southern ends of all of the planned "D" Seam longwall panels. <br />Sandstone is favorable because of its generally higher strength <br />which more rapidly distributes the stress concentrated above the <br />barrier pillars in the underlying mine workings (Chanda, 1989). <br />Figure 2 indicates that the weighted average 588 sandstone <br />recorded in the borehole logs (Table 2) actually predicts an 17.5° <br />mean angle of draw (Abel & Lee, 1984). The use of a 35° angle of <br />draw conservatively extends the predicted area of longwall mining <br />induced subsidence effects to a greater distance beyond the surface <br />projection of the mining boundaries, approximately SSB greater, <br />than predicted by the 17.5° lithology based angle of draw. <br />The geometric conditions of each of the planned Sanborn Creek <br />Mine longwall panels are presented in Table 3. Specifically, the <br />individual. planned longwall panel dimensions, the approximate depth <br />of various locations along the boundaries of the panel and the <br />estimated thickness of the "D" Seam along the boundaries of the <br />panel. The depth and seam thickness are indicated at the <br />individual subsidence prediction locations, i.e. the depth at the <br />center of the starter rooms, where the individual panel ribsides <br />are one-half the panel width from the ends of the panel, where the <br />depth contours cross the panel boundaries and the depth at the <br />center of the face-support recovery rooms. Table 3 demonstrates <br />that the maximum depth of the individual panels is at the starter <br />rooms, the north ends, and the minimum depth at the face-support <br />recovery rooms, the south ends. <br /> <br />9 <br />