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I03 It should be noted that although the committee amendment groups ,,.. coal waste disposal and excess spoil placement in the same subsection -~ these disposal processes should be substantially separate due to dif- ferent particle and moisture characteristics of the mine wastes. In addition to the above guidelines for. soil area disposal construc- tion, consideration should be given to requinn~ more eatens~ve moni- tonngand inspections of such operations, partecularly during the pe- • clod of drain construction. R'here such fills will exceed 1 million cubic yards in volume, additional precautions for inspection are a necessity. With careful engineering and particular care taken in the construc- tion of such fills, ~t should be possible to provide safe, stable spoil storage areas which may have improved land uses. eae.~ rvvs xr~rva Area mining, the second basic type of mining addressed in the pro- posed legislation, is characterized by operations covering relatively 1 rge, contiguous tracts of land that are relatively flat or geat]y rolling. The topography of such an area has tow local relief. Although slopPS may be relatively steep or near vertical, as in a mesa formation, rho local relief is sufficiently small so that rho mining destroys or turns over all of tlio land which makes up the local relief on tho tract mined. In area minir-$, the ability to reclaim to approximate original con- i ~,..- roar depends primarily on the quantity of spoil available in relation ' to the amount of coal removed (the stripping ratio). A profile of a typical area mining operation where the vol®o of spoil equals or ezceeds the volume of coal removed is aho~sn schemat- ically u~ Figure 6. The environmenta3 standard Proposed intends that the overburden from the first cut will be blended into the undisturbed landscape and mine site and the final cut is backfilled with spoil from ~-~ several previous cuts as well as from the top of the highwall ii desired. In such instances, the actual elevation of the reclaimed land might be ~~ higher than the premined lands due to the swell of s i] material. Two other conditions arise in~Tit a area minmo srt~a,aon. The first occurs where the spoil is sufficient to return the mined area to appi•oxi- mate ori~ nal contour but not to the approximate original elevation. Tlie second condition arises when the stripping ratio is such that there is not sul$cient spoil to achieve either element of approximate original contour (elevation or configiirntion). The first condition is illustrated schematicn~)1}• in Figure 6. The orig- inal topography is of lon• local relief (re)stively flat). Tl~e overage overburden is 50 feet thick and the average thicknPSS of the coal seam is 100 feet. ('onservativo!~ assuming a ~0 percent expansion of the overburden, the problem is to g~•acle a pit averaging 150 feet deep by a ]enQt1~ and breadth of the mining npcratton with 50 feet of fill material ro that. it blends into the sutroundirq enviiY:nment. This can be accom- plished by regariling the final mining site into a saucerlike depression which resembles the original landscape. Spoil materiel would be graded upward past the top of the coal seam on each of the highways while the overburden on top of the highways would be pushed down and blended into the elope oet~veen the onieinnl elevation and the v depressed topography of the regarded spoil at the bottom of the -- minmgsite.