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Colony Shale Oil Project, Colorado MLRB Permit M-80.1M7 December 13, 3066 2006 Affected Area Status Summary and Request for Reduction in Affedetl Acreage . Similar to the 110 acres of finished cliffs, rockfill and talus slope faces described above, there were no plans for any additional construction in these reclaimed areas, but there was also no driving force from the operator's perspective to begin the process of removing these areas from the affected area inventory at that time. There were a few areas disturbed in 1982 where the disturbance was very limited, consisting of stripping vegetation but not removing topsoil. In these special cases, temporary stabilization required in the Interim Site Plan (1982 Amendment) was achieved by simply seeding those areas with the permanent seed mix. These areas were generally small, varying from as small as 1 acre to as much as 20 acres, but these are included in above described 281 acres of lands reclaimed during 1982-1984 along with other areas for which significantly greater site preparation work was required. Thus by the end of 1984, of the original 1,127 disturbed acres, about 391 acres were in a condition that the process of removing these areas from the affected area inventory could have been started. As described above, 110 acres of this were finished areas such as rock cuts and rock or talus slope faces, and 281 acres of were revegetated areas. With the completion of Middle Fork Dam and Reservoir in 1984, and subsequent completion in 1986 of reclamation of the disturbed areas above the dam, an additional 72 acres had entered the "reclaimed" category, bringing fhe total acreage that could begin the process of removal from the affected area inventory to 463 acres as of the end of 1986 (110 acres finished, 353 acres reclaimed). Finally, 4 acres in the Switchyard Fill {Area 16A) were revegetated in 1989, bringing the total acreage that could begin the release process to 467 acres (110 acres finished, 357 acres reclaimed). Note that the reclaimed acreage total includes 66 acres of reclaimed lands within areas for which a clarification of permanent post-mining land use is also being requested (Areas 1, 26, 3A, 3B and 3C, described later in the Area by Area Discussion in Section 4). To avoid double counting, these 66 acres have been included in the post mining land use clarification acreage. The "net" acreage for which release from the affected acreage on the basis of satisfaction of the reclamation plan is therefore 467 acres less 66 acres = 401 acres (110 acres finished, 291 acres reclaimed). All areas for which release is being requested based on successful completion of reclamation have been reclaimed in accordance with the approved reclamation plan as described in Exhibit E of the original March 1980 permit application and subsequent amendments. For reference, excerpts of relevant sections of Exhibit E from the original March 1980 permit application and Appendix D-f from the 1982 Interim Site Plan amendment application are presented in Appendix B. In general, the excerpts are limited to text passages relevant to the areas being requested for release. For example, since no change to the status of the majority of the Plant Site (Area 18) or the LaSal Laydown site (Area 166) are requested, portions of Exhibit E that deal with these areas are not included in the excerpts provided herewith in Appendix B. The Appendix p-1 excerpt from the 1982 ISP presents additional details regarding special surface preparation and seeding techniques developed by Colony with the assistance of various high altitude/steep slope reclamation specialists in 1982. While the basic steps involved in the reclamation process are presented in the above described excerpts from the permit and amendment applications, and specified seed motes are described elsewhere in the reclamation plan and subsequent technical revisions and amendments, Colony also applied several other advanced techniques to improve the chances for vegetation successfully taking root in some of these more difficult applications. While not specifically required in the reclamation plan, these additional efforts included but were not limited to the following: • For hay used as mulch, Colony used only select hay from the Upper Colorado Environmental Plant Center (UCEPC, Meeker) or from farmers who had certified fields in order to minimize the invasion of unwanted species • Colony used custom developed seed mixes including shrubs, (orbs and special cultivars also obtained from UCEPC • Colony experimented with varying the seeding schedule. For example, in Area 19 B only the (orbs were seeded in the first season, followed by seeding with grasses the following year to give the fortis a head start over the faster growing grasses