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eh <br />ESPEY, HUSTON & ASSOCIATES, INC. <br />1 <br />U <br />and are laterally discontinuous. Cores taken to sample lithologies adjacent to coal <br />seams have recovered casts and molds of other unidentified mollusks from several <br />dark shale beds throughout the Williams Fork Formation. <br />No vertebrate fossil remains aze known to occur or aze expected within <br />the mine plan azea or within a 1-mile radius of its boundary. If vertebrate fossil <br />remains aze exposed during mine construction, arrangements will be made by <br />Northern Coal Company to assess their value and have them excavated if necessary. <br />2.2.6 Sulfur Content of Coal <br />Table F-1 lists the average coal quality for each of the five seams <br />planned for mining as outlined in this application. The J seam has the greatest <br />expected as-received sulfur content. All of the seams have sulfur contents <br />significantly below the 0.6 pounds per million BTU as permitted by Environmental <br />Protection Agency Sulfur Standazds. <br />Analyses of the forms of sulfur as performed on 38 samples from the <br />principal coal bed seams (FF, UP, P, J and G) show the range of sulfur, is the form <br />of organics, to be 0.17-0.43 percent and that of pyrites, 0.01-0.09 percent. <br />Determination of the percent of iron sulfides, marcasite and pyrite, present in the <br />coal is shown in Table F-2 below for each coal bed. <br />Research by Cazuccio (1970 and 1977) and others has demonstrated that <br />groundwaters infiltrating from sediments of freshwater or continental paleo- <br />environments usually contain significant calcium carbonate concentrations and are <br />alkaline or neutral in pH. Together these factors have a buffering or neutralizing <br />effect on the acidity naturally present or produced by various types of bacteria that <br />catalyze the acid producing reaction. The chemical analysis of the overburden (see <br />Appendix) and those analyses of groundwater taken from wells and springs in the <br />mine plan area show the Williams Fork Formation and its coals to be of continental <br /> <br />P-13 <br />