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E S ct~comw~r Seneca Coal Company November 16, 2004 Mr. Dave Berry p~. Coal Program Supervisor ~ ~ ~'° ~ ~ ~~~~ ~ ~ ~~ Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology 1313 Sherman Street, Room 215 N~V ~ ~ 204 Denver, CO 80203 ~iuision of Minerals min Ga-~ RE: Reclamation and Permit Compliance Status Dear Mr. Berry, Seneca Coal Company (SCC) very much appredates the opporhutity to meet with you and your staff on October 28, 2004, and thanks you for your prompt response of the same date to our recent letters and meetings. Upon review of your letter, SCC feels a brief response is warranted to ensure we all have a complete understanding of the reclamation and permitting status of the mines. As we have previously stated, SCC remains fully committed to completing all the redaatation and pemtitting tasks we have outlined in as timely a fashion as is feasible. In pursuit of this goal, it is vital in our opinion, to keep the lines of communication completely open to ensure nothing is overlooked, understated or misunderstood. Permitting Tasks and Schedule SCC agrees with information contained in the table embedded in your October 281etter, and we appredate the Division's timely review and approval of TR-25 for the Yoast mine. With regard to PR-04 at Seneca II-W, we agree that the status was not sufficiently emphasized in the October 7, 20041ettex. It is our current understanding that the only items remaining to be addressed are Stipulation 38 (mislabeled as Stipulation 36 in our letter), and clarifying the right-of--entry information we submitted on Octobet 29, 2004. As we indicated previously, a response to Stipulation 38 is forthcoming on or before December 1, 2004, but we need to clarify the right-of--entry submittal based on feedback fiom Dan Mathews via electronic mail dated November 3, 2004. If this is not the Division's understanding, please contact Bob Shevling of my staff so that we can gain a mutual understanding of the status of PR-04. Major Reclamation Projects and Schedule It appears we have good agreement on the reclamation project priorities based on your feedback, and we are acutely awaze of the Division's interest in seeing that the backfilling and grading operations are finished in 2004. SCC is confident that the backfilling and grading projects will all be completed by the end of this calendar year and is making every effort to make this happen, including adding additional equipment and manpower. SCC's qualifying statements about labor and (more importantly) weather contingencies were directed at topso$ redistribution. We appredate the Division's observation that the approved topsoil redistribution plans account for weather contingendes. As I stated in our September 23, 2004 meeting, the most important consideration that might delay SCC from completing the backfilling and grading would be weather related circumstances that might jeopardize the safety of our backfilling and grading hews. However, we view the chances of a weather related interruption of backfilling and grading as remote at the present time. Seneca Coal Company • P.O. Box 670 • Hayden, Colorado 81839 Telephone (970) 278-3707 • FAX (970) 2783014