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..- <br />If the culverts clog and wash out, the small embankment will be much easier <br />and less expensive to repair or reconstruct. The smaller road system will <br />produce less surface runoff and encounter fewer cut slope and embankment fill <br />slope stability problems. It will be easier to access adjoining surfaces from <br />the smaller road. These are only a sample of the observations possible to <br />suggest that the road most appropriate and compatible as a component of a <br />ranching postmining landscape is that size and type of road system a rancher <br />would construct. The road system proposed to be retained by C-YVCC, with its <br />55 foot wide embankment top surfaces exceeds the Routt County major <br />thoroughfare standard (two 12' lanes with two 3' shoulders = 30' total width) <br />by 83 percent. <br />The modified C-YVCC mine road system mdy accommodate a rancher's immediate <br />needs, but it will not be compatible with that rancher's long term land use <br />needs. The C-YVCC culverts, up to 60 inches in diameter, buried beneath <br />embankments up to 80 feet high with 55 foot wide top surfaces, are so out of <br />scale with a normal ranch road system that they beg a land use failure. If a <br />culvert in one of these oversized embankments jams or collapses the rancher <br />will be financially and operationally incapable of affecting repairs to the <br />oversized embankment. In that event, the rancher would abandon the oversized <br />embankment in favor of amore normal sized bypass route with more normal <br />construction and maintenance characteristics and costs. <br />Recommendation <br />In my opinion, the proposal to retain the existing road embankments at the <br />C-YVCC permit area is incompatible with the approved ranching postanining land <br />use. For this reason their retention does not fulfill the requirements of <br />Rule 4.03.1(f) and the technical revision application should be denied. <br />Cyprus - Yampa Valley Coal Corporation should modify their proposal to include <br />modified embankments compatible with the size and character of a normal ranch <br />road system. <br />The operator refers~in the application to the premining road system documented <br />on the USGS Rattlesnake Butte Quadrangle (1971) and aerial photographs taken <br />in 1962 and 1970. These information sources should provide an excellent data <br />base from which to determine the characteristics of the historically <br />compatible road system for the ranching land use which characterized the <br />premining landscape of the Eckman Park mine site. <br />cc: Bob Liddle <br />Fred Banta <br />