2007-11-29_REVISION - C1980005 (2)

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II. CRITERIA FOR BOND RELEASE Since mining began at Seneca II in 1972 prior to Colorado's permanent regulatory program, affected lands within Seneca II Mine fall within pre-law, interim program and permanent program categories. The criteria used for bond release varies for each of these categories. The entire area included in this bond release request falls in the pre-law category. The regulatory programs and the lands pertaining to this category are described below. Pre-Law Areas Pre-law refers to those lands that were mined prior to the passage of the Surface Coal Mining Reclamation Act and the Federal interim rules which took effect on May 5, 1978. The Pre-Law areas are those lands where coal was removed prior to May 5, 1978. For the lands mined prior to the passage of SMCRA, the Colorado Open Cut Land Reclamation Act of 1969 and the Colorado Open Mining Land Reclamation Act of 1973 as amended in 1976, regulated coal mining activities. On Exhibit B, Chronology of Mining of the Pre-Law bond release application, SCC identified pre-law lands with a coal removal limit date of August 3, 1977 and May 3, 1978. These areas correspond to the yellow and green shaded areas, respectively on Exhibit B. None of the green shaded areas shown on Exhibit B were evaluated with this bond release. The area evaluated was limited to the yellow shaded area 259.1 acres as requested by SCC and as shown on Exhibit A, Pre-Law Bond Release Area. The Pre-Law bond release area requested corresponds to the Bond Release Block 1 (BRB-1), with a few exceptions as follows. Sediment Pond 002 was included in the bond release application, a small portion of BRB-4 to the south and west of Pond 002 was included in the Pre-Law area, a small portion of BRB-3 that represents the former haul road corridor through the central portion of the Pre- Law area was included in the bond release application, and as previously described the Old Wolf Creek Pit area was excluded from the application. This appears to account for the acreage differences between the BRB-1 acres approved in the PAP (296.1 acres) and those requested with this bond release application (259.1 acres). Please refer to Exhibit 13-13.1 for the specific locations of the acreage discrepancies described above. The Bond Release Blocks were proposed by SCC and approved by the DRMS with Technical Revision No. 40 (TR-40) and the Bond Release Blocks are described in detail in Appendix 13-13 of the PAP. The remainder of the lands outside of BRB-1 will be evaluated under the interim and permanent regulatory programs criteria for future bond releases. The DRMS evaluated the pre-law reclamation using the criteria from the Colorado Open Cut Land Reclamation Act of 1969, the Colorado Open Mining Land Reclamation Act of 1973, and the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Act of 1976, C.R.S. 1973, 34-32-101 et. seq., as amended. The Reclamation Board Rules effective February 25, 1976 expanded the detail needed in a permit application concerning the methods of reclamation and type of reclamation that was proposed to be achieved. These rules were the most stringent criteria considered during the SL-02 bond release inspection for those areas evaluated as Pre-Law and included the following. 5