2007-12-11_GENERAL DOCUMENTS - M1982112

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important to protect as they are vital wildlife habitats, are important to maintaining water quality, and are often very attractive tree lined corridors winding through an otherwise open, grass dominated prairie setting. This mining operation is located near the bottom of a valley rather than on a ridge or mesa. It is located adjacent to a riparian corridor, but does not encroach on that corridor or adversely affect it. The only impact on the riparian corridor stems from the private road (shown on maps as Hunt Road) that crosses Running Creek just west of the mining operation, but this road exists for purposes other than the mining operation and accesses other property to the east of this site. It would therefore be concluded that this mining operation complies with this requirement. 4 5 Avoid conflicts with residential developments, agricultural uses, wildlife, environmentally sensitive areas, and visually sensitive areas - These potential conflicts are more thoroughly discussed in other sections of this application, but suffice it to say for now that conflicts with these uses are judged as being minimal. Environmental suitability standards A. Selection of the least environmental constraints impacted - Mining can have severe impacts on many environmental resources. Sometimes, these impacts cannot be avoided simply because the material to be mined is in a sensitive location. In those cases, a choice must be made as to whether the material to be mined is so valuable and so scarce in less sensitive areas that it must be extracted from that site. With regard to this operation, there is undoubtedly some sand (and perhaps gravel) in the Running Creek riparian corridor. Those locations typically contain just those kinds of materials. But no mining will occur in that area. Instead the mining is restricted to the dry hillsides adjacent to the riparian corridor where resource impacts on wildlife and agricultural resources are far less severe. B. Minimization of environmental disturbance - Conducting mining operations creates severe environmental disturbance at the location of the mine, irrespective of the type of mining done. Besides considering the location of the operation, as discussed in item A above, there must be consideration of how to mitigate the impacts that do occur. In Colorado this function is largely regulated by the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board through a permitting process. The permits must address these specific issues in a way that demonstrates to the satisfaction of the Board that whatever impacts do occur are minimized and Miller Gravel Pit -Special Use Permit Page 7 of 26