Laserfiche WebLink
1 <br />CHAPTER II <br />t SITE CONDITIONS <br />' A. GENERAL <br />' The project site is in a portion of the gently sloping northern flank of <br />the Danforth Hills and is roughly bounded on the east by Good Spring Creek <br />t which flows northerly into Axial Basin near Axial, approximately 2 miles <br />to the north. On the west is Taylor Creek which flows northeasterly into <br />' Axial Basin. (See Figure I-1.} <br />The proposed open pit lies in a stratigraphic sequence of Upper Cretaceous <br />rocks which are in the lower part of the Williams Fork formation of the <br />Mesaverde group. The unit consists of interbedded sandstone, siltstone, <br />' mud stone, sandy shale, shale, and coal. The sandstone is very Light to <br />light gray quartzarenite. Particles constituting the sandstone are well- <br />sorted with grain sizes being mostly fine to medium sand firmly cemented <br />together. The individual beds vary from a few inches to several feet in <br />thickness and are usually thin crossbedded or laminated with darker minerals. <br />The finer-grained rocks range from highly indurated medium gray siltstone <br />to dark gray carbonaceous claystone and shale. <br />Five to ten feet of residual clay soils overlie the bedrock over most of <br />' the site. The ground-water level at the site is several hundred feet deep, <br />with some perched water above the coal seams. The topsoils, therefore, are <br />' only partly saturated by capillary rise and by surficial adsorption. De- <br />tails of the field exploration program conducted for this project to deter- <br />, mine the nature of the topsoils is contained in Appendix A. Reference is <br />also made to field studies performed under WAWA report 0807 for the pre- <br />liminary design of open pit slopes. <br />1 <br /> <br />WaWRNLEfl project 0823 II-1 <br />& ASSOCIIfl6 <br />