Laserfiche WebLink
• INTRODUCTION <br />Energy Fuels Corporation ("Energy Fuels") presently mines coal from <br />private, state, and federal coal leases. Several federal leases have <br />been granted recently under the emergency or "short-term" leasing cri- <br />teria in response to a critical situation faced by Energy Fuels to <br />maintain existing levels of production and employment and to fulfill <br />contractual obligations. With this application Energy Fuels has pre- <br />pared a mining and reclamation plan encompassing the newly acquired <br />Federal Coal Lease No. C-22644 together with existing federal, private, <br />and state reserves in order to bring them into compliance with the <br />recently promulgated regulations for the federal lands program under the <br />permanent regulatory program of the Surface Mining Control and Recla- <br />mation Act as well as the. newly enacted Colorado Surface Coal Mining <br />Reclamation Act. <br />• Background of Energy Fuels <br />Energy Fuels is a relatively small, privately owned Colorado corporation <br />with executive offices in Denver, Colorado, and field offices in Steamboat <br />Springs, Colorado. The Company is engaged exclusively in coal mining, <br />ranching and farming operations on lands which it either owns or controls <br />in an area located approximately 20 miles southwest of Steamboat Springs <br />in Routt County, Colorado, See Figure 1, General Location Map. <br />Operations began at the Energy Ptine No. 1 in 1962. The first coal was <br />produced during the last quarter of that year, and thereafter annual <br />production Sncreased at relatively modest rates for the next nine years. <br />Yearly production records for the operation are shown in Table 1, <br />Historical Production Rates. <br />Beginning in 1972, Energy Fuels launched a five-year expansion program <br />to increase coal production. The production objective was set to <br />achieve a rate of four million tons per year by Sanuary 1, 1977 to <br />L_~ <br />