Laserfiche WebLink
Several main points were made in the Mayo report to Mountain Coal Company and in the Mayo <br />presentation to the CDMG on January 1998 as evidence that water issuing from the spring <br />at the Edwazds Portal is not the same water that was Bumped upgradient from the spring by <br />Mountain Coal Company. In the verbal presentation, it appeared to me that Dr Mayo's main <br />lines of evidence involved the major element chemistry of the waters, particularly the sodium ion <br />content of the two waters, and the cazbon isotope composition of Edwards Portal spring vs <br />Bumped waters. We conclude that these lines of evidence do not show that the spring water is not <br />related to the sump water. <br />Sodium Concentrations <br />The water in the NW panels sump was derived from mine inflow from several faults intersected <br />during mining operations. One of the lines of argument used to show that the Edwards Portal <br />spring water is not the same water as Bumped water, is the differences in the Na-ion content of <br />the waters from the spring and those from the various faults. The contention is that water <br />emenating from the Edwazds Portal contains significantly less Na' than the fault waters and a <br />mechanism to reduce that Na could not have operated to affect the water between the time and <br />location of the two points of analysis. <br />(1) There really isn't much difference in the sodium contents. <br />It is the Division's contention that the Na-content of the Edwards Portal Spring water is not <br />considerably less than that of the fault waters. Individual analyses of"in-mine fault samples" <br />yield values of Na that range from 717 mg,~L to 1175 mg/L. (The range can be expressed in <br />millequivalents as 31.2 to 51.1 meq/I..) That compazes to a single analysis from the Edwards <br />portal spring of 755 mg/L (32.8 meq/L.), a value at the low end, but still within the range <br />represented in the fault waters. The sodium content of portal spring water agrees completely <br />with B East Mains fault water. <br />So the first rebuttal of the sodium argument is simply that the sodium content isn't different. <br />(2) We really don't know what the composition of "sump water" is. <br />The comparison of waters in the report uses a suite of samples taken from "in-mine fault <br />waters" to represent water in the N W Panels sump. <br />~ No information is given as to the origin of these "fault water" samples for which <br />analyses are presented <br />O No infomtation exists on proportions of these "fault waters" mixed into the NW <br />sealed sump. Averaging chemical compositions of the fault waters, as was done for <br />comparison purposes in the report, is not productive. A simple averaging gives equal <br />value to each analysis, while no information is available on the proportions of water from <br />various locations and/or with various chemical compositions that were combined in the <br />NW sealed sump. If any single water composition should be compared to the Edwards <br />