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3 Description of the Applicant's Proposal The Golden Eagle mine had its beginnings in 1976 under the name of the Maxwell mine, which was permitted and operated by CF6I Corporation to supply its Pueblo steel plant coke ovens. Mine development while under CF&I management included driving the main access slope - a 1,400 foot incline to the Maxwell seam - and the extension of 14-entry East and Weat Mains a total of about 10,000 feet to the northwest-southeast parallel to and just south of the Purgatory River. CF6I's decision to permanently close its primary steel furnaces idled the mine and led to the sale of the Haswell and adjacent Allen Mine and surface facilities to North Central Energy Company in 1984. The new operator, Wyoming Fuel Company, lacked a large, long term sales contract at the time, and so its original mine plan involved extending submain and panel entry development begun by CFSI while awaiting a large contract, with development production being sufficient to meet its existing sales contracts. Five and seven entry submains (First, Second, and Third North and Second and Third South) were driven to the northeast-southwest perpendicular to the East-West Mains, and by late 1987, submain development was sufficient to permit panel entry development. Zn April 1988, while driving the First and Second Rights of Third South (these were to be the gate roads foi the first of a series of 600' a 9,000' longwall panels east of the South Mains), miners encountered a totally unanticipated fault and rock dike, which released large amounts of ApZo and CA4 in the section. The section was sealed and WFC suspended furEher development plans east of the Third South until the eatent of the geologic description could be delineated. Development efforts shifted to panel entries between Second and Third South and extension of the Third North Mains, north under the Purgatory River Valley to access the reserves north of the river. In mid-1988, the sought after large sales contract (750,000 TPY) became reality giving WFC the impetus to irrveat in the production phase longwall equipment. WFC's present mine plea, as described is the permit revision of September 1, 1989, and the revised LM[J application dated February 1, 1990, contains several significant charges from the plan presented in their original permit revision covering the mining of the coal in Federal Lease C-067. These changes, which include different panel orientations, mining height cutoff and sequencing, relate back to a reaeaeeaseat of the property's reserve base initiated by the discovery of a ecologic disruption east of the Third South Mains. In comparing the pious sine plan with the following description plan refer to the original ~ revier dated Juae 23, 1988. ~- As with the previoaa sine'plan, the current submission shows the Golden Eagle mine designed with longrall mining as the sole production method. Panel length sad orientation have been selected to best match the present ieopach maps given the constraint on layout imposed by limited extraction underneath the Purgatory River alluvial valley floor, the geologic disruptions on the east aide of the property and a minimum, mining cutoff of five feet. r~ .~