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1.0 INTRODUCTION <br />Colowyo Coal Company (CCC) will pursue the development of the Collom Coal Project on lands <br />owned and/or controlled by CCC located to the West of the company's existing coal mining operations. <br />The project will occur within a Colorado Division of Minerals and Geology (CDMG) permit area of 15,845 <br />acres that lies predominantly within Moffat County, although about 160 acres of the permit area along the <br />southern boundary extends into Rio Blanco County. This area covers about 20% of four townships: T4N <br />R94W, T4N R93W, T3N R94W, and T3N R93W. Furthermore, the permit area encompasses the <br />majority of the headwaters of Jubb Creek (both East and West forks) and Little Collom Creek, portions of <br />the headwaters of Collom Creek, and a small portion of the main trunk of Wilson Creek. Only Collom, <br />Wilson, and lower Jubb Creeks are perennial. Within this permit area lie two other areal designations <br />discussed within this document, the Vegetation Study Area (13,605 acres) and the approximate pit area <br />(--2500 acre disturbance). Other disturbances associated with this project have not been fully developed <br />at the time of this submittal, but would be subordinate in size to the footprint of the pit area, and would be <br />within the Vegetation Study Area boundary. Such disturbances would include, a permanent dump for the <br />initial box cut, haul and access roads, a possible overland conveyor, powerline corridors, office and shop <br />facilities, lay down yards, etc. The existing coal loadout and rail-loop facility would be used for this new <br />40 operation. <br />The need for this project can be stated simply: "to continue to supply future combustion coal to <br />various electrical power plants around the West and other regions of the United States". The coal from <br />this mining area is of exceptional value given its use for blending with other coals to reduce Clean Air Act <br />regulated emissions at power generation facilities. Colowyo coal exhibits elevated Btu capability, very <br />low sulfur, and near zero heavy metal (mercury) contamination. <br />During preliminary planning activities, it was determined that this "project area" included both <br />wetlands and Waters of the U.S. (WUS) under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) <br />that could not be totally avoided. As a result, delineation work was completed for the entire "Vegetation <br />Study Area" during August of 2005 by Cedar Creek Associates, Inc. (Cedar Creek) of Fort Collins, <br />Colorado. Cedar Creek also completed an extensive evaluation of the upland vegetation communities <br />across this study area for compliance with CDMG regulations, and another company (Maxim <br />Technologies - Billings, MT office) performed an extensive and detailed soils evaluation of the same area <br />and responsive to CDMG regulations. Because of these extensive and detailed vegetation and soils <br />evaluations across the study area, the evaluations presented in this document focus on the wetland areas <br />as a separate and segregate community. Contrasts with the surrounding environment may be inferred by <br />review of these larger more encompassing documents. For example, the identified wetlands (at lower <br />•