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Chapter 1 -Purpose and Need 1.A. INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the project proposal, the purpose and need for the proposal, [he decisions to be made, the public involvement effort (scoping), and the resulting issue identification. Mountain Coa] Company (MCC) operates the West Elk Mine, att underground coal mine near the town of Somerset, in Gunnison County, Colorado. MCC mines coal from several federal leases, some of which underlie surface lands that are administered by the USDA-Forest Service, Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre-Gunnison National Forest (GMUG), Paonia Ranger District. MCC informed the GMUG on March 21, 2001 that they were experiencing problems with excessive methane gas build up in the underground mine. The mine's existing ventilation system is unable to adequately remove the methane from the workings to keep the gas level within a safe operating range. MCC had been trying various other methods, including installing horizontal drill holes into the coal seam to liberate and control the methane gas. The mine has been periodically shut down by the Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) over the past few months to allow the methane levels to reduce [o safe concentrations. Production activity has been allowed only when [he methane gas levels fall to safe concentrations. MCC has undertaken a program to install gob ventilation boreholes (GVBs) holes from the land surface into the underground mine workings to assist in liberating the methane gas. MCCs original drilling strategy was to install multiple GVBs from one drill pad location using extreme angle, slant drilling techniques. However, this approach has had ]united success because of geologic and overburden conditions that make such drilling over longer distances problematic. Additionally, the GVB completed on the extreme slants had limited effectiveness in ventilating the methane gas. MCC has modified their GVB drilling strategy to involve drilling vertical or near vertical holes, where one hole is drilled per drill pad. MCC has submitted another proposal for installation of additional GVBs on their existing federal coal lease COC-56447 (see Section 1.B). 1.B. PROPOSED ACTION The proposed action is to install five vertical or near vertical GVB from five pad locations on the land surface into the underground mine for the purpose of liberating methane gas from the east half of longwall panel 15 at [he West Elk mine (see attached figure). The proposed action also includes considering needed access [o the drill sites which would entail construction of about one (1) mile of new temporary roads, and may ' A temporary road is defined as one that is "authorized by contract, permit, lease, other written authorization, or emergency operation, not intended to be part of the forest transportation system and not necessary for long-term resource management." (36 CFR Part 212.1)