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' bRAFTDRAFTARAF'I' <br />Contact: Cindy Parmenter <br />Director of Communications <br />(303)692-2013 <br />~r Immediate Release <br /> <br />xxxxxx. lvlay x. zooo <br />DENVER -The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Water Quality <br />Control Division XX7{XxX entered iato a settlement agreement with Battle Mocntain Gold Co, <br />which included a $71,700 civil penalty and a $30,000 supplemental environmental project. <br />The settlement resulted from the illegal discharge of pollutants that occurred at the <br />company's closed gold mine into Rito Seco Creek neaz San Luis from October 7: 1997, to the <br />present. The mine, located four miles northeast of San Luis in Costilla County, was in operation <br />from Jaauary 1990 threugh October 1996. <br />The $30,060 supplemental environmental project, which the company has ageed to fund <br />as part of the settlement, will help pay for improvements to the Costilla County'JVater and <br />Sanitation District's treatment pleat located neaz the Town of San Pablo. <br />J. David Holm, the director of the Water Quality Control Division, said the company is <br />being given credit for $15,000 or half the $30,000 cost of the supplemental project, reducing the <br />settlement's original civil penalty of $86,700 to $71,700. <br />Holm explained that the illegal discharge occurred when seepage from one of the gold <br />mine's two piu was found to be flowing into the Rito Seco in mid-1998. The seepage developed <br />after the pit was backfilled with waste rock as part of the reclamation process for the mine site. <br />The company has since applied for necessary state permits. <br />--more-- <br />ZO'd OZ~ZT OOOZ 8 fiEW S60n-ZRl-snccx2a unu~u ~~ ~ ~~~ ~-. <br />