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Ill Illlllllllllllll 999 STATE OF COLORADO DIVISION OF MINERALS AND GEOLOGY Depart menl of Nalu ral Resources 1313 Sherman 51., Room ? I S Denver, Colorado 80203 Phone: (1031 866-3567 FAX' U031832-8106 February 28, 1994 Mr. Greg Reed Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement Western Support Center 1020 Fifteenth Street Denver, CO 80203 Re: Bear Mine No. 3, File No. C-81-033 PR-01 -Windy Gap Process Dear Mr. Reed: I~~ DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES Rur Rumer Govemar Ken Salazar E~ecwivr Dueanr Michael B. Long Division Diredur The Division and your office are concurrently reviewing Bear Coal Company's Permit Revision No. 1 (PR-011 application. The revision addresses adding new permit area and coal reserves, west of and adjacent to the current Bear Mine permit area. On January 31, 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to our PR-01 completeness notice Isee attached). Their only concern relates to additional water depletion from the Upper Colorado River Basin (Windy Gap Process) attributable to the increased mine area. On January 17, 1994, Bear Coal Company submitted an updated summary of their current water usage and also provided the surface area of their pond, at maximum capacity, for potential evaporative loss calculations (see attachedl. Evaluation of water consumption by the Bear Coal Mine operation is simple. All water consumed by operations is obtained from a single metered well. The only other attributable water loss is evaporation from their single sediment pond. Bear Coal Company is projecting to produce 500,000 tons of coal for each of the next three years, at which time the mine is scheduled to shut down permanently. To be conservative, water usage figures from 1992 (19.5 acre-feet) were used for projecting future consumption. Coal production in 1992 was 513,000 tons, which exceeds the future projections of 500,000 tons per year. Pond evaporation rates for the region around Bear Mine, as determined by the Colorado Division of Water Resources, average approximately 3.125 acre-feet per year per acre of pond surface area. Bear Coal's sediment pond has a surface acreage of .36 acre at maximum capacity. 36 ac. x 3.1 ac.ft./ac./yr. = 1.1 ac.ft./yr.