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product. This material is pugmilled with water and loaded into trucks for storage in our old quarr)~ pits. The raw material containing most of the sulfur is our shale. The sulfur is contained in the kerogen (shale oil) impregnated in the shale. Although there is some fuel value contributed by the shale, the sulfur creates many process problems, espec;ially the wasting of large amounts of CKD. We must purge the system of sulfur and this typically requires the elimination of over 200 tons per day from the kiln system. We are experimenting with the reduction or elimination of this shale from our kiln mix. We are introducing a small amount of flyash and increasing our use of limestone in the kiln feed mi:K. This is showing promising results. It appears that we have been able to cut CY;D loss in half; while, increasing production by 5 to 7%. The only n~sgative of this program so far is the fact that it may use up our limestone supply in Dowe Flats faster than we originally planned. In addition, we must dig much deeper and rnove a lot more overburden in order to recover the additional limestone. This additional rock movement also requires changes to existing permits. This is the second key area we have requested permit changes for. Permit Change Requests and Emission Netting Boulder County is included in the metro-Denver "Non-Attainment with EPA Ambient Air Quality Standards" regarding particulate. Although the air quality is generally very good compared to these standards, there has been an historic pattern where sensors locatc;d typically in Boulder and Denver have recorded 1 or more days per year above this standard. As a consequence, Southdown or any company can only change their permits if emissions are reduced or do not increase by a significant level. In order to make the permit changes required to support the projects outlined above, it was necessary for Southdown to demonstrate improvement or no significant increase in emissions ±o the State of Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. For the types of changes we are planning the typical method is to complete a series of calculations which "model" past/current operations and compare these emissions to "future" planned emissions. A company is allovved to use its baseline from the last two years as the existing operations. The company is also allowed to use improvements to its existing and planned future operations in addition to the requested changes. Southdown has been making several changes to operations which were used in these calculations and will result in a major reduction in emissions within the next 6 months. 2