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Varra Companies, Inc. <br />Office of Special Projects <br />8120 Gage Street Frederick, Colorado 80516 Telephone (970) 353-8310 Fax(970)353-4047 <br />Again, the Poudre River borders the north and feeds the shoreline vegetation, <br />including the even stand of trees, which also includes willows and ash. <br />Industrial lands lie to the west and mineral extraction to the east, and are <br />essentially absent of trees or potential impacts not more readily influenced by <br />their own localized uses. The essentially neglected oversized back yards to the <br />south are above and beyond the influence of the ground and surface waters of <br />the location. The historically blighted lands which occupy the planned activity <br />will benefit from the planned reclamation to a predominantly native grass. <br />Bald Eagles and other birds of prey do roost in the winter on the mature <br />cottonwood trees in a proximity east of the proposed permit, and near other <br />active extraction operations. When it comes to pastures, cottonwood trees, our <br />neighbors, Bald Eagles, other birds of prey, we like them too; and often if you <br />want to see some of them, you have to leave the nearby residential areas where <br />wildlife has been forced out, and go to a sand and gravel mine. <br />Conservation of the Mineral Resource is vital to the economic health and wealth <br />of all of Colorado and its citizens. It is the one singular human activity that <br />actually cleans up after itself, often resulting in enhanced habitat for wildlife, <br />improvements to the local ecology, and a long term beneficial and commonly <br />diverse end uses that improves not only the prior on-site potentials, but which <br />also serves to better complement the surrounding lands; all of which this <br />application will accomplish. The OMLR is our partner in the reclamation of <br />these lands, and we appreciate the Division's concerns and responsibilities, <br />which we share. <br />There are in this instance, no significant wildlife, groundwater or surface water <br />concerns for which this operation does not serve to benefit as proposed, <br />especially when compared to the present state of the property, or to those <br />surrounding lands. What are those surrounding lands: two other resource <br />recovery operations; a truck wash out facility for emptying livestock waste into <br />basins; a scrap process storage and salvage yard; a land fill operation for <br />commercial and agricultural storage; a cheese factory; pallet storage facility; <br />animal hide processor; and numerous residential homes along sixteenth street <br />whose back yards extend on average over 400± feet from their foundations and <br />whose lots, being too small to be productive and too large to manage, have gone <br />to weed or storage. <br />Varra Companies, Inc. correspondence of 23 February 2011 to the Colorado Office of Mined Land Reclamation 14 <br />(OMLR) in reply to OMLR correspondence of 4 October 2010 - Western Sugar Reclamation Land <br />Development Project - M-2010-049.