Laserfiche WebLink
<br />Introduction <br />On April 30, 1975 Occidental Oil Shale, Inc. (OXY) applied for a Special <br />Use Permit to enlarge its existing mineral waste disposal pile in "Dry Gulch", <br />a tributary of Logan Wash which itself is a tributary of Roan Creek. An <br />earlier Special Use Permit, granted in 1974, allows OXY to emplace up to <br />500,000 cubic yards in Dry Gulch. About 300,000 cubic yards have been em- <br />placed under this permit. The current application requests an increase to <br />8.8 million cubic yards. In its need for further information and guidance <br />the Garfield County Commissioners forwarded the application to the Colorado <br />Land Use Commission who in turn forwarded it to various other State agencies. <br />When the agencies replied to the Commission a summary was prepared and sent <br />to the County Commissioners along with copies of the agencies' responses. <br />This paper is a reply and discussion of certain points raised by the Land <br />• Use Commission. <br />The Occidental Plodified In-Situ Oil Shale Process <br />The process consists of two major phases, mining and retorting, and brief <br />descriptions are given by Chew (1974) and Ridley and Chew (1975), copies of ~ <br />which are enclosed. The major purpose of the mining phase is to develop 15 <br />to 20~ void space distributed as evenly as possible through the stratigraphic <br />section to be retorted. This is accomplished by mining a volume of rock <br />equivalent to the void space desired. The adjacent "ore grade" rock is <br />then blasted to fragment it. Layout of a typical production panel and <br />elevation of a typical retort arrangement are shown on Figures 4 and 6 <br />of Chew (1974). <br />i <br />In retorting the top of the rubble is heated until combustion commences. Air <br />