PERMFILE136825

• Permit No: M1988112
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 3/22/1989
• Doc Name: MINUTES
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

-25-
• So either you are going to have to supply your organic material or you're
not going to get very good plant growth. If you don't get good plant growth,
in revegetation or if the growth doesn't establish or is too sparse you are
going to get erosion. And that brings us down to the tailings question. Does
this tailings material - do these tailings material have acid generating
potential? Now, it's very interesting because one of the humidity cell tests
of Battle Mountain Corporation's contractors, demonstrated a pH of 3.01 with
mobilization of metals as measured I think by conductivity or dissolved
solids. And the response to Steve Renner's question about that, about -
well, gee, you say there is no acid generation but here we have acid
generation, was that it's an anomaly, it was a laboratory error. Now 1 submit
to you that as scientist looking at something like that, if I did tens of
tests, rather than hundreds of tests, then one sample giving me that sort of
measurement says that there is no statistical evidence to dismiss that. I
would say, well you have some material that has acid generating potential.
Now, I teach quadrogeochemistry course at Mines, I teach Water Quality Courses
• at Mines where we deal with some of these issues. And I have spoken some to
the geochemists in fact at Mines; and these ores and some of these rocks in
the area - they're disseminated ores. There is lots of pyriteic material
within these ores. They have done some laboratory experiments too show that
not all of these sulfer - sulfer bearing materials -- are amenable to acid
generation. But, in fact, that's the case when you just have water and
oxygen. When you add the microbiota that you normally find in a mining area,
.that accelerates even the more resistant sulfuides into generating mine
drainage. And, actually, I was quite surprised to see that stata~nent that
these sort of materials are not acid generating. And looking at that one
test, suggested to me that in fact there was at least some material that was
acid generating in those tailings piles.
In addition to the reclamation procedure, and if i can term~~nate that
part there, its a little brief, I'd like to talk a little bit about the roads,
the use of the roads during the operation of the mine; the haul roads. What
you find mostly in the literature is that a haul road will give you erosion
that is perhaps 2,000 times that of the urenined area in the first place. Many