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DECISION MEMO <br />Bowie Resources Limited <br />Road Access in Sheep Corral Gulch to GVB-8C <br />And <br />Monitor Well Completion at Drill Hole IP99-16 <br />USDA-Forest Service <br />Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests <br />Paonia Ranger District <br />Delta County, Colorado <br />RECEIVED <br />AUG 16 2002 <br />Division o(Minerals b Geology <br />I. INTRODUCTION <br />Bowie Resources Limited (BRL) operates the Bowie No. 2 mine about 7 miles from <br />Paonia, in Delta County, Colorado. BRL holds the Iron Point Federal Coal Lease (COC- <br />61209), portions of which contain National Forest System (NFS) lands administered by <br />the USDA-Forest Service, Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests <br />(GMUG). <br />As part of maintaining a safe operating environment in the underground mine, BRL <br />undertook a program of installing gob ventilation boreholes (GVB) from the land surface <br />into the mine workings to liberate methane gas. BRL proposed 5 GVBs on the National <br />Forest to liberate methane gas from longwall panels 8 and 9. The GMUG completed an <br />Environmental Assessment (EA, Modification of the Iron Point Coal Exploration License <br />(COC-61945) Drilling Plan and Coal Exploration Plan and Gob Ventilation Borehole <br />Installation on Iron Point Federal Coal Lease (COC-61219}, Bowie Resources Limited, <br />Bowie No. Z Mine) in October 2001. The Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant <br />Impact (DN/FONSI, January 2002) approved installation of the GVBs and road access, <br />and coal exploration drilling and related'access. <br />Since the DN/FONSI, BRL has identified the desire to use an alternate road access to <br />drill GVB-8C. In addition, BRL has identified plans to complete a nest of ground water <br />monitoring wells at coal exploration hole IP99-16 in order to comply with requirements <br />of the Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology (CDMG) for ground water monitoring <br />for the underground mine. As these particulaz activities were not analyzed in the <br />previous EA, additional environmental analysis was deemed necessary. <br />II. PROPOSED ACTION <br />The first proposed action is to allow BRL to recondition a former road alignment that is <br />now used as an ATV trail in Sheep Corral Gulch, from the Forest Boundary in the SW `/4, <br />S W '/< of section 34, T 12 S, R 91 W for the purposes of accessing the previously <br />