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<br /> <br />December 27, 2007 <br />Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety <br />1313 Sherman Street <br />Room 215 <br />Denver, CO 80203 <br />RECEIVED <br />JAN 0 2 2008 <br />Division of Reclamation, <br />Mining and Safety <br />Re: Technical Revision to the New Horizon Mine Permit No. C-81-008 by <br />Western Fuels-Colorado (WFC) in Nucla, CO <br />Dear Sirs, <br />I am writing this letter as a formal protest to the application for a <br />Technical Revision to the New Horizon Mine Permit No. C-81-008. This <br />Technical Revision covers the change in Success Standards in Irrigated <br />Pasture from a standard to a reference area. <br />I have lived in Nucla all of my 47 years and am a landowner in the area <br />affected by WFC. I am currently in the negotiation process with WFC for <br />a mining contract on my property and have now had mining operations <br />on both the east and north sides of my property. Therefore, I am very <br />familiar with this area, the people who are landowners and the <br />agricultural uses of the land in the area. Agriculture has been a <br />mainstay of this area since Nucla became a town and was, in fact, the <br />reason the town of Nucla evolved in 1906. Land in this area has been <br />and still is utilized for crops such as alfalfa, corn, wheat, and oats. Some <br />of the land is used as irrigated pastureland, but this is usually the <br />inferior land that is not as well suited for crop production. You need to <br />understand that even cropland is pastured once the crop is harvested, <br />but that may not be the primary use of the acreage and should not be <br />how it is classified. In the case of my own land, I have only used it as <br />irrigated pasture in the ten years that I have owned it, but portions of it <br />have been utilized for crop production in the past. My dad currently has <br />140 acres of land under contract to WFC and mining is in progress. This <br />is land that I grew up on and watched my dad farm to grow the crops to <br />feed the animals that provided the livelihood for our family. I do not <br />want my land or the land that I look out on reclaimed to a lesser quality <br />and cannot believe that the DRMS would willingly allow this. <br />When mining contracts are formulated with WFC, the landowners are <br />repeatedly assured that their land will be reclaimed to meet the <br />reclamation standards required by the DRMS. Therefore, landowners <br />frequently do not negotiate for detailed reclamation items in the <br />contractual language; instead having a possibly false sense of security <br />S5 <br />IS