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Parachute Site will be provided by the water treatment facility. Potable water for the • Piceance Site will be trucked in and stored. Use of existing water rights would eliminate any new depletion of surface water as a result of commercial operation of the Yankee Gulch Project. In general, surface water impacts from the Yankee Gulch Project could arise as a result of two other activities: fill during construction activities and discharges during commercial mine operations. Fill activities during construction are regulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE), and discharges to surface waters during mine operations are regulated by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). The Piceance Site is located in an area of dry washes that contain water only during the spring snowmelt runoff and an occasional late summer thunderstorm. Piceance Creek is generally located on non-BLM property that bisects the Yankee Gulch Joint Venture Leases and the Piceance Site. The product and return water pipelines will be constructed under Piceance Creek near the access road crossing and at a second location in Section 32, T2S, R97W, with two additional crossings under Stewart Gulch and two under Parachute Creek. Clean Water Act Section 404 permits will be obtained from the ACOE for impacts to wetlands and other "waters of the U.S." Section 404 permits authorize the discharge • of dredged or fill materials into waters of the United States. Once such permits are granted, work authorization will be subject to a number of special conditions including restoration of the affected areas in accordance with BLM requirements (American Soda 1997a, ACOE 1997). Due to the type of pipe used in the product pipeline, it is anticipated that the pipe will be installed using open-cut methods, with appropriate sediment control measures to be determined in the Section 404 permitting process. The crossings will not permanently alter the stream channel hydraulic capacity or the hydraulic control within the channel. The stream crossings on Piceance Creek and Stewart Gulch are generally located in agricultural areas where grazing or crop farming has severely limited the development of riparian vegetation and has accelerated bank erosion. Consequently, siltation in the stream channels is relatively high. Parachute Creek has a substantially larger and better developed riparian zone. At the Parachute Creek crossings, a minor short-term increase in sediment load in the channel may occur. Because the crossings will be constructed with specific sediment control measures developed in consultation with the BLM and the ACOE, the construction impacts will not result in significant impacts to surface waters. The crossings would result in only temporary disturbance in very small areas adjacent to the stream with temporary increases in suspended sediments near each construction area. . The Piceance Site processing facilities will be located on a level plateau outside natural gullies and drainages. As described in Section 5.0, site protection plans, American Soda, L.L.P. 8_8 Commercial Mine Plan August IB, 1996