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INTRODUCTION <br />The Vagneur Pit was initially permitted through the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining <br />and Safety in 1980 as permit M-1980-085. The original permit planned on mining 104.7 acres of <br />land in the Woody Creek area, which is approximately 10 miles northwest of Aspen. Mining has <br />taken place since 1980 at a rate of 150,000 to 240,000 tons per year. The current disturbance is <br />54.6 acres of the total 104.7 acres in the permit azea. The pemut area will not chance for the <br />2007 Amendment. <br />It was originally planned that most of the permit area would be mined. In order to reduce <br />reclamation bond, the hillside mining azea (now called expansion area) was removed from the <br />mining boundary in Technical Revision #1, which was approved in 1992. It has always been the <br />intent to re-add this area to the mine plan once the initial area was mined out. It was for this <br />reason that the area was never removed from the permit area. The area to be now added to the <br />mining operation is directly east of the current operation and is approxunately 16.0 acres. The <br />entire area where the expansion will be located can be seen on Map C-1 as well as in the aerial <br />photo at the end of this section. At the conclusion of mining, the existing pit and the expansion <br />will be combined into one lazge opening, which will be fully reclaimed. Technical Revision #1 <br />also established the employee housing area which is part of the pemut area (small parcel). <br />Through the years of mining, the Vagneur Pit has not experienced any major problems. There <br />have been no major MSHA violations, dust problems, noise problems or visual problems <br />throughout the 26 years which the Vagneur Pit has been operational. <br />In early 2000, Amendment #1 was approved by the DRMS to allow a greater exposed mining <br />area, asphalt plant and concrete plant facilities and evaporation ponds. At that time, the bond was <br />established to be $902,500. <br />In July of 2005, Technical Revision #2 was approved to amend the Weed Management Plan to <br />address removal of tamarisk and Russian olive trees. <br />Yagneur Pit June 07 i-3 <br />