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IL CRITERIA AND SCHEDULE FOR BOND RELEASE PHASE III Rule 3.03.1(2)(c) states that the final portion of performance bond ; 'shall be released when the permittee has successfully completed all surface coal nmining and reclamation operations in accordance with the approved reclamation plan, and the final inspection procedures of 3.03.2 have been satisfied. This shall not be before the expiration of the period specified in 3.02.3." The Colorado Coal Mine No. t was seeded in 1989 with a rangeland seedmix. The seed mix can be found in Table 16 in the permit. The post-mining land use of rangeland is consistent with the pre-mining land use. The reclaimed community is dominated by cool season perennial grasses with a mix of perennial warm season grasses, perennial fortis and occasional sub-shrubs. III. OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS PHASE III A. Reve etg anon Vegetation data was collected in June 1998 and July 1999 on the reclaimed and reference areas. Additional diversity sampling was collected on the reclainmed area in September 1998. 1. Cover: The approved cover standard for the mine states that "Vegetative cover will be restored on the reclaimed area to at least 90% of the vegetative cover as that on the approved reference area." The cover standard was achieved for the 1998 sanmpling data. The petmittee chose to analyze the vegetative cover data with the elimination of the annual and biennial species component from both the reference area data and the reclaimed area data. This approach is approved and suggested in the Division's "Guideline Regarding Selected Coal Mine bond Release Issues", dated April 18, 1995. Reference area herbaceous cover for 1998 was 25.07 %. Ninety percent of the reference area cover is 22.56%. The reclaimed area cover measured 23.44% during the June 1998 data collection. The permittee successfully demonstrated that the reclaimed area cover is greater than 90% of the reference azea cover with a 90% confidence interval. The cover standard was met and exceeded for the 1999 sampling data. The permittee analyzed the vegetative cover data with the elimination of the annual and biennial species component from both the reference area data and the reclaimed area data. This approach is approved. Reference area herbaceous cover for 1999 was 21.87 %. The reclaimed area cover measured 24.67 %. The permittee successfully demonstrated that the reclaimed area cover is greater than the reference area cover. No additional statistical evaluation was necessary.