2008-06-09_PERMIT FILE - C1980007 ‎(6)‎

• Permit No: C1980007
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 6/9/2008
• Doc Name: Exhibit 79 Part 2
• Section_Exhibit Name: Exhibit 80 Drilling Activities - TR111
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

Response to Comments
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Table 5-1
DEIS Comments and Responses
Commenter Comment Comment/Response

gas from the mine for safety reasons, but the not the right to beneficially use it
without holding the oil and gas lease.
Similarly, the oil and gas lease holder has the exclusive right to the oil and
gas. BLNI Form 3100-11 (Offer to Lease and Lease for Oil and Gas) is issued
granting the exclusive right to drill for, mine, extract, remove and dispose of
all the oil and gas (except helium) on the lands described in the lease.
Westenl Slope 12a "The dominant vegetation type that would be disturbed is oak brush, which
Enviromnental forms dense, unproductive expanses as a result of historic fire suppression and
Resource Council logging. Wildlife habitat would be unproved by oak brush clearing as a result
of this project." and "It is our belief that the expanses of uniform oak brush in
the project area were largely created by historic patterns of logging and fire
suppression. Therefore, rather than assuming that the best restoration solution
is to let the oak brush regenerate, we would like the Forest Service to analyze
what the original native vegetation would have been prior to logging and fire
suppression...
RESPONSE: The Forest Service has research and information that disagree
that logging and fire suppression created the oakbrush expanses (D. Bradford
Specialist report, project file). There are no records that oak have ever been
logged in the Dry Fork area.
Oak brush has long been recognized as a major component of the vegetation
on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests (GMUG
NF). George B. Sudworth, an early forester, who surveyed the Battlement
Mesa Forest Reserve frotn September 24 to October 30, 1898 noted that oak
brush was widespread across the Forest Reserve (the Battlement Mesa Forest
Reserve included Battlement Mesa and Grand Mesa, as well as the Muddy
area of the Paonia Ranger District. Today these areas make up part of the
White River N.F and GMUG N.F.). His specific comments regarding oak
brush are as follows, (Report on Battlement Mesa Forest Reserve by George
B. Sudworth, United States Geological Survey Twentieth Annual Report, Part
5 Report on Forest Reserves, Washington, Govenunent Printing Office, 1898,
p.205):
"The Rocky Mountain oak, locally known as oak brush is of widespread
occurrence, chiefly as athicket-forming brush but also becoming a small tree
to a greater extent in this reserve than in the White River Reserve. It has no
commercial value. Its greatest importance is in checking the descent of
mountain waters, and thus protecting lower treeless hills from violent
washing.
Large areas are densely covered with this growth, usually ranging from the
low sage mesas, 7,000 feet, up to the aspen belt, 8,000 to 8,500 feet, patches
of both oak and aspen often mingling.
As a brush, which is the most common form, its dense thickets cover all the
dry sandy and gravelly knolls and foothills below the forest-forming trees. As
a tree it is confined to the deep rich soils of the bench lands and gentle slopes,
mingling snore or less with groves of aspen. Groups of this tree, with bent and
twisted trunks occur at close intervals, foimin a loose, low forest cover on
Deer Creek Ventilation Shaft and E Seam Methane Drainage Wells FEIS
163