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s • • commercial mine permitting - 1998 through Fall 1999 • commercial mine facility construction -Spring 1999 through Fall 2000 • commercial operations permitting (air) -Fall 1999 through Fall 2001 • commercial operations start -Fall 2000. 1.5 PROPOSED MINING AND PROCESSING Solution mining of nahcolite will occur from vertical solution mining wells. Multiple solution mining wells will operate simultaneously; however, each well will be mined independently. Approximately 15 wells will be developed each year after the initial start-up period. The project will have an average consumptive water use of approximately I.4 cubic foot per second (cfs) of water. It is anticipated that an existing water right will be used to allow process water to be taken from the Colorado River via an existing intake located in the river near the town of Parachute, Solution mining and product processing will each require heat, which will be produced by on-site natural gas-fired boilers at the Piceance and Parachute Sites. Electrical power will be supplied via an existing transmission line in the Parachute Creek valley and from a new transmission line to be installed near the Piceance Site. • Solution mining of bedded and disseminated nahcolite deposits will be accomplished by injection of pressurized hot water. Recovered sodium bicarbonate solutions will be processed into sodium carbonate/sodium bicarbonate solutions at the Piceance Site, which will render them suitably stable for pipeline transport to the i final processing operations at the Parachute Site. At the Parachute Site, the sodium carbonate/sodium bicarbonate solutions received from the Piceance Site will be processed to produce soda ash and commercial-grade sodium bicarbonate. Each of these products has a variety of important industrial uses. Bulk products will be transported by rail as described above, with a small amount of sodium bicarbonate being shipped from the Parachute Site by truck. 1.5,1 Solution Mining Each well will contain an injection string and a production string. Injection fluid will enter the cavity and dissolve nahcolite. The fluid, now called production fluid, will exit the well carrying the dissolved nahcolite in solution. When totally mined, the leached area will have 25 to 30 percent of its original volume, i.e., that part occupied by nahcolite, removed by solution mining. Although it is not actually a void because only a portion of the volume will have been mined, the leached zone is referred to as a solution mining cavity. At the • Piceance Site, the proposed mining interval contains 70 to 75 percent oil shale and other residual rock. American Soda. L.L.P. 1-4 Commercial Mine Plan August 18, ]998