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~~ O JARsz <br /> <br />DESCRIPTION ~ OPERATION: After having seen the other two quarries first, Anne <br />Baldrige, during an inspection last May, commented, "Now this is a limestone <br />quarry." It was a very appropriate comment because of the three, this quarry <br />is clearly the most conventional - that is, a big hole in the ground with high, <br />benched walls on virtually all sides. <br />The quarry will not stay this way for long, though, because a recent <br />amendment and complete redesign will alter this character. Once again, one of <br />the primary motivators in the redesign vas an improvement of the reclamation <br />environment and an increase in the mineable reserves. <br />DESCRIPTION ~ VISUAL RECLAMATION: This site was first opened at the turn of <br />the century by the Snider brothers who mined limestone as building rock. The <br />quarry was very small (you could lose the original operation in the current <br />quarry). In the late 1960's Castle Concrete began to mine. Public interest <br />promptly entered the picture and lawsuits were filed against the company in an <br />attempt to stop the mining. The public lost, the company made some plan <br />changes, and the mining proceeded, after an additional lawsuit was resolved in <br />Castle's favor on special use rights brought by the company against the E1 Paso <br />County Commissioners. <br />About 1980 Castle Concrete began to think about the quarry and the fact <br />that the permit was severely limiting. They had a court provided right to mine <br />more, but it wasn't in the permit. We promptly went forward with planning for <br />an expansion, but during the planning there was a consideration of how to <br />balance mining and reclamation. <br />It took nearly a year to develop the plan, but with the help of some <br />careful considerations and a lot of computer time, a plan was developed which <br />would expand the quarry reserves greatly, permit the quarry to disappear behind <br />intervening hills, as viewed from most areas, and produce a topography which <br />would be highly reclaimable in all the visible areas as well as reduce the <br />"difficult to reclaim" topography from a maximum to a minimum. The plan is <br />currently under implementation and is beginning to show significant advances in <br />the desired effect. We have even heard comments from "quarry watchers" that <br />they can see some changes occurring up at the site. One recent comment <br />15 <br />