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c) If, for any reason, the gold bearing material exceeded the percentage needed to provide for good <br />reclamation or the amount of gold bearing material sent to the plant could not be sold by the gravel <br />operation, the permit would have to be revised to allow for a portable plant that would move with <br />the mining area, which would allow the waste rock to be delivered to the previously mined out azeas <br />adjacent to the plant. <br />d) The operator could also use trucks or set up a conveyor to bring back a portion of the waste <br />gravel to the mined out cuts, if a deficit azose. <br />e) The average thickness of gold bearing material used to determine the material handling calcula- <br />tions is 7.5 feet. See calculations later in this section. If the amount of gold bearing material was <br />lower than 4.0 feet in thickness, the operation would likely not be profitable since the overburden to <br />gold bearing ratio would be too high. Therefore, in these azeas, no mining would occur. In the very <br />unlikely case that 4' to 6' of gold bearing material is profitable over a lazge area, there may be a <br />slight surplus of material. Using 5' of material, the remaining overburden of 55' would swell at 20%, <br />resulting in a thickness of 66 feet. This increase of 6' is not significant and would be handled by <br />simply having slightly greater amounts of slope azeas instead of flat azeas in the reclamation plan. <br />Also, over time, the 20% swell would likely shrink to 15%, keeping the volumes the same after re- <br />moving the 5' of gold bearing material. <br />e) The permittee will closely monitor the amount of gold beazing material sent to the plant and the <br />amount of aggregate sold to anticipate any problems eazly in the operation life to allow planning of <br />the alternatives described above. The owner/permittee has a keen economic interest in making sure <br />that the post-mining topography is suitable for the uses shown in the reclamation plan. <br />Most of the gold bearing gravel is expected to be located below water table, therefore, a pump will <br />be located below the working azea in each cut to dewater the pit prior to mining. It is expected that <br />inflows to the pump will be approximately 1000 gpm. This amount will be pumped from the pit to <br />the sediment pond system. <br />Alma Placer 7/03 11 <br />