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m:\m in\hhp\wes[elk l .doc <br />DRAFT <br />SUMMARY REPORT <br />WEST ELK <br />GEOCHEMICAL ASSESSMENT: <br />OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS <br />Harry H. Posey <br />February 24, 1998 <br />As a result of nearly coincident occurrences of a landslide on the Bear mine <br />property, the appearance of anever-before-noticed warm spring on the Bear Mine <br />property, and pumping of warm fault waters to an underground sump in the West Elk <br />mine, which was up-dip from the slide and the seep, the Division of Minerals and <br />Geology issued a notice of violation to the operators of the West Elk mine. The <br />underlying supposition in this NOV was that the West Elk Mine fault waters, which had <br />been stored in the underground sump, seeped through an unmined section of the B-seam <br />coal between the hvo operations and exited at the toe of a landslide complex on the Bear <br />Mine property. The point at which the seep appeared had been predicted in a previous <br />West Elk Mine report as a probable hydrological consequence of the underground <br />Bumping. <br />The proximity of all of the waters examined in this report to surface meteoric <br />waters provides.pirysical indications that surface meteoric water may be a component of <br />the underground waters and may have played a role in the slide and the seep. However, <br />the geochemical compositions of the waters eliminate rain and snow as the single source <br />of all of the waters. Reports and a presentation by Dr. Alan Mayo, Y'or West Elk Mine, <br />have concluded that the fault waters in the West Elk Mine are not the source of the seep <br />on the Bear mine property. The purpose of the current report is to try to resolve whether <br />the Edwards Portal Seep water could have come from some combination of B East Mains <br />fault water, Southeast Headgate fault water and other local fault waters in the West Elk <br />mine, or whether the fault waters can be eliminated as the major source of the seep water. <br />Data which were evaluated include two reports by Mayo and Associates dated <br />January 20, 1998, and a letter from Dr. Mayo dated February 20, 1998. To augment Dr. <br />Mayo's interpretations, several plausible mineral/fluid reaction mechanisms were <br />evaluated. <br />This report concludes that the fault waters cannot be eliminated, unequivocally, as <br />sources of the seep water. Although the Mayo reports indicate that there are shifrs in <br />