GENERAL55787

• Permit No: M1999002
• IBM Index Class Name: General Documents
• Doc Date: 8/18/1998
• Doc Name: COMMERCIAL MINE PLAN SUBMITTED TO BLM SECTION 8
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

Yankee Gulch Project will be oxidized to form nitrogen dioxide (NO:), the pollutant
• used for the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) compliance
analysis.
Background concentrations (see Section 7.5.2) will be added to the modeled results to
account for air quality impacts from the surrounding area. The modeling results,
including the contribution from background emissions, will be compared to the
NAAQS. These results, which will provide an objective measure of the impact on
air quality, will be provided to the BLM upon completion.
Because none of the emission sources will emit a sufficient amount of pollutants to
trigger Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations under the Clean Air Act,
and because the applicable air quality control permits will include measures to
document and control emissions, it is anticipated that air quality impacts will be
minor.
8.5 VEGETATION
Apart from roads, permanent facilities will occupy a total of approximately 20 acres
at the Piceance Site. Approximately 6.5 acres of native pinyon-juniper woodlands
and sagebrush communities will be displaced by the initial processing plant area,
and about 14 acres of sagebrush vegetation will be lost in the creation of the
• evaporation pond (see Figure 2-3 and Figure 7-17). Pinyon-juniper woodlands and
sagebrush communities, respectively, dominate upland hillsides and level upland
areas at the Piceance Site, and long-term loss of small acreages of these common
native plant communities will constitute an insignificant impact. As discussed in
Section 6.3, the Piceance Site processing plant and evaporation pond will function
indefinitely, and their reclamation will only occur in the distant future at the end of
the commercial mining phase. These surface facility sites will be revegetated as
described in Section 6.5 or consistent with applicable requirements in effect at the
time.
Larger areas of native vegetation would be affected in the development of the
commercial well field, but the vegetation of particular mining areas ("5-year mining
panels," see Section 2.1.1.2) would be impacted for a much shorter period of time
than that displaced by permanent structures. As indicated in Section 2.1.1.2, the
amount of land that could be disturbed within each of the 5-year mining panels
ranges from 125 acres to 209 acres and averages about 172 acres (see Figure 2-1 and
Table 2-1). Actual land disturbance within each mining panel will be much less, but
it will be significant. The result of development of each mining panel will be the
fragmentation of plant communities into a mosaic or patchwork pattern of
vegetation.
Staged reclamation of the solution mining well field as each mining panel is retired
will minimize vegetation lost at any one time throughoLlt the project life. As
described in Section 6.2, it is likely that reclamation of a particular mining panel will
Amencan Soda, L.L.P. 8-15
Commerual Mine Plan
Augusi 18, 199H