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2/21/09 7:57 PM <br />History of pit - The pit was started in 1958 by the Colorado Department of <br />Highways for the existing State Highway 141. The entrance from State Hwy <br />141 was about 100 feet east of the southern most point of the pit boundary, <br />where the asphalt plant was slightly below the existing fence level and water <br />drained to the highway side with the northerly face left in about a 2H:1V <br />slope. No reclamation was done at this time by the state at the finish of the <br />Colorado 141 project. <br />In September of 1980 Nielson's, Inc. filed for a reclamation permit to <br />complete a State Hwy 141 overlay project. The original mining plan was <br />written mainly with the intent of mining just the material for the original <br />project for the highway job. This created a highwall at the northern end of <br />the pit of about 35' to 40' deep on a natural slope of about a iH:1V slope <br />which daylighted about 100 feet from the northern boundary. All of the <br />excavated top trees, wood, debris, topsoil, etc. was then pushed back over <br />the excavated slope at about a 2H: IV slope at the request of my father <br />Vernon Moores, to retain as much usable space as possible on the bottom <br />side. He then took over the reclamation on the pit in the hopes that we <br />might be able to sell a little gravel to help with the income of the ranch. <br />With the bust of the local economy in the early 1980's this did not become a <br />reality until the early 1990's. <br />In 1988 the State of Colorado exercised their right of an option to buy <br />material and hired a contractor to crush gravel for them, leaving even a <br />larger highwall face and only enough was done to fulfill their obligation with <br />the State of Colorado to complete their job. This left water draining <br />southwest as called for in the original plan, but draining off of the pit area. <br />In 1989 my father Vernon Moores passed away and soon after the State <br />Mined Land requested that this pit be reclaimed and as new laws stating that <br />all wastewater must be retained within the pit area, this made necessary a <br />lot of dozer work with an old D6 Dozer to raise the outer circumference of <br />the southern part of the pit approximately 20 to 25 feet from the original <br />level to insure that we could retain all the waste water runoff. This was <br />completed and soon after we decided that we needed to recoup some of our <br />costs that we were incurring. We purchased a crusher and raised the center <br />of the pit so that water would run away from the crusher instead of under it. <br />Then using front end loaders to feed the crusher and a D9 Cat pushing the <br />