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1 ' William J. Carter March 12, 1998 Re: Response to Susan Burgmaier's comments on the 1996 Annual Hydrologic Report 1 Sanbom Creek Mine does not propose to demonstrate that there has been or will be no impact on the North Fork alluvium. Any human activity will have an impact on the environment, and ' certainly the Somerset Mine had an impact on the environment. The current monitoring program can determine the remaining impacts from the abandoned Somerset Mine. ' The monitoring program for the Sanbom Creek Mine should be a meaningful gathering of useful information to determine the impacts, for an evaluation of whether the impacts aze significant. ' Sanbom Creek Mine will minimize any negative impacts which can be controlled, within practical and economic limits. The evaluation should determine if the impacts significantly outweigh the value to society of the coal produced by the Sanbom Creek Mine. Sanbom Creek Mine will ' continue to monitor NF-1, NF-2, and NF-3 to determine the overall impacts to the most important hydrologic resource, the North Fork of the Gunnison River. Comment 9. "DMG's letter discussing our review of last yeaz's report mentioned some items which would be helpful to DMG if included in future reports. We appreciate the addition of a table of contents, well ' completion data, and baseline data in this year's report." Response 9. ' Thank you. Comment ]0. "It would be helpful if, in future reports, OCM would also include the minimum, maximum, and average values for all constituents for each site. Currently OCM includes baseline values for each constituent. DMG believes the report values would be more useful if they represented the period of record rather than just one yeaz of baseline" ' Response 10. The Division of Minerals and Geology requested baseline data, and baseline data was supplied. The volume of data for the period of record for all constituents for each site is very large. Sanbom Creek Mine is currently on the second computer system in four yeazs to store the data it cumently has. Much of the data is "no flow" in the numerous ephemeral drainages and "springs" required by the current monitoring program. 1 The monitoring program requirements have changed over the years, particularly with Technical Revision Number 20, Decision Date: May 2, 1994. The varying requirements for frequency of monitoring, and the parameters to be monitored, will make presentation of the data in the report difficult and confusing. Previous attempts during preparation of the 1994 Annual Hydrologic Report indicated problems with this type of presentation with data from a single year, let alone for presentation of data from 1978 to the present. 23