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• TAB 20 <br />BACKFILLING AND GRADING <br />Backfilling and Grading Procedures <br />Rough grading will be performed with bulldozers, scrapers, maintainers and, occasionally the dragline. <br />Bulldozers and scrapers are used for final grading. Seneca does not plan to remove any necessary <br />reclamation equipment from the area of operation until final reclamation is completed. Typically, the <br />process of grading begins with bulldozers building roadways into the ungraded spoil. Once sufficient <br />access into the spoil is provided, dozers or scrapers move the spoil material in the direction and the <br />amounts required to achieve the desired land form. The movement of spoil material is generally <br />downslope, due to economic and safety considerations. Completion of rough backfilling and grading <br />will occur within 180 days following final coal removal unless a variance has been approved. <br />Backfilled materials shall be placed to minimize adverse effects on ground water, minimize off-site <br />effects, and to support the approved post mining land use. <br />• SCC's experience has shown that grading at least two spoils simultaneously produces more desirable <br />reclamation results than grading one spoil at a time. This is because the creation of graded slopes is <br />primarily dependent upon the ability to perform "area grading" versus grading one spoil row. Because <br />of many variables encountered in the overburden removal process, it is very difficult to predict the <br />exact, final configuration of the spoil. Thus, the final planning for reclamation grading must be <br />performed after the spoil is created in order to grade the disturbed areas in a diverse manner such that <br />surface irregularities are created to minimize erosion, improve range and wildlife habitat, infiltration and <br />~~improve soil-moisture holding-characteristics for the revegetation process. After mining progresses <br />into a mining area and normal production operations are established, grading will generally 6e within <br />two spoils. Creating an acceptable post mining landform is the primary consideration that determines <br />the number of spoils that may exist in the field. Once the spoil piles are reduced to the point that <br />equipment can be safety operated across the slope of the rough graded area, final grading will be done <br />on the contour. <br />Final interior spoil grading will produce a diverse topography with slopes generally no steeper than <br />51h1~11v1, except in areas where pre-mining slopes were steeper than 5:1. Pinal highwalls will be <br />reduced to slopes flatter than 3:1. In some cases backfill material is placed against undisturbed virgin <br />• ground at the top of a final highwall. Slopes may exceed 3H:1 V in these isolated areas above the final <br />highwall where the natural slope is originally steeper than 3H:1 V. All backfilled slopes in disturbed <br />areas will be placed to achieve a static factor of safety of 1.3. <br />TR-25 1 Revised 10/04 <br />