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The water rights for this property aze sufficient for any possible use. The documents aze included in <br />Appendix A -Right of Entry. <br />•, <br />3. South Platte River and Fooodnlain <br />Upstream from the site, the South Platte River drains an azea of approximately 31 squaze miles. This <br />azea has wet meadows in the floodplain, evergreen wooded sideslopes up to timberline and a <br />substantial amount of land above timberline consisting of high altitude grasses and forbs among a <br />significant amount of rocks with lichens. A number of lode gold mines existed in the basin, of which <br />the Magnolia, Dollie Vazden, Paris and Russia mines were the most famous. Much of the upstream <br />basin is extremely steep, with 4 -1400 feet high mountains in the azea - Mt. Bross, Mt. Democrat, Mt. <br />Lincoln and Mt. Cameron. <br />.j Water quality from the closest USGS gage (6693980), which is located immediately north of Fairplay <br />The 25 yeaz peak flow for the drainage basin of the River just below the main entrance to the site is <br />600 cfs. <br />The 100 yeaz floodplain of the River is shown on Map C-1. Since the mining operations and all <br />associated activity will operate out of the River floodplain azea and will not dischazge into it, it is not <br />and 3 miles south of the minesite revealed little information. The gage was only sampled for quality <br />data once per yeaz from 1978 to 1980 and very little data was gathered. An investigation into USGS <br />and EPA reports on water quality in the South Platte River basin revealed that water quality at the <br />upper reaches of the basin, neaz Alma, was good in spite of considerable past lode mining upstream <br />from the Alma Placer. There were trace elements found in the upstream portions of the basin due to <br />past lode mining but no problems with pH, suspended solids, dissolved solids, nitrogen, nitrates, <br />pesticides and organic chemicals. All of the USGS papers that evaluated the South Platte basin <br />concluded that the water quality problems in the watershed occur much further downstream, with <br />agricultural chemicals and urban development. This report and other data are included in Appendix <br />B. <br />• Alma Placer 7/03 56 <br />