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A number of existing roads within the permit area have been approved or proposed as permanent <br />structures for the postmining land use, to allow for access through the permit area by multiple <br />private landowners, and to provide access to various portions of the permit area to facilitate <br />postmining use and management. These roads are shown on Figures 2a and 2b of this document. <br />Landowner requests for permanent road retention, rationale and justification for retention, and <br />summary of permanent road specifications are found in Tab 20, Attachment 20-2 of the permit <br />and the locations are shown on Exhibit 20-2, Post Mining Topography. These roads are also <br />depicted on Exhibit B (Phase I Bond Release Post-mine Topography and Drainage) of the SL-3 <br />application. Road design plans, postmining criteria, and As-Built drawings are provided in Tab <br />13 of the permit. <br />Haul roads or haul road segments to be retained for permanent retention as access roads were <br />modified for postmining use by eliminating MSHA berms, reducing travel width to 28 feet <br />(Routt County Road 53C) or 20 feet (all other permanent access roads), and grading and seeding <br />roadsides and graded slopes. Several light use roads have been proposed for permanent retention <br />as ranch roads mostly to replace ranch road segments that were in place on the landscape prior to <br />mining. Light-use roads are generally reduced to twelve feet in width, and graded and seeded on <br />the roadsides. <br />III. OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS <br />The following discussion of observations and findings focuses on the results of backfilling and <br />grading work and drainage reestablishment in the South Extension Area; and the reassessment of <br />areas excluded from the SL-2 bond release request which are now subject to the SL-3 request. The <br />reassessed areas include Channel 006-NE2, Channel 006-E1, Light Use Road LU-1, Light Use <br />Road LU-IA, Light Use Road LU-3, Light Use Road LU-4, Road "J", Culvert I-1, and the Scraper <br />Road. <br />The evaluation of the bond release application included the bond release inspection, an office <br />review of the permit requirements and regulatory criteria, and review of past inspection reports. <br />The bond release inspection was conducted September 21-23, 2010. Several items including: The <br />Post-Mining Topography, Cross-Sections of Backfilled and Graded Areas, and As-Built <br />Drainage Profiles that were included in the bond release application were reviewed by the <br />Division in the office during the technical evaluation of the bond release application before, <br />during and after the inspection. <br />During the Phase I bond release inspection, participants walked through most of the bond release <br />request area to allow for visual assessment of compliance with pertinent requirements as <br />described above in Section 11 of this document. All of the data used to confirm the post-mining <br />topography and permanent, post-mining drainage channels was collected with a Trimble GeoXT <br />handheld GPS and Trimble Terrasync software. The data was analyzed with Trimble Pathfinder <br />Office 3. 1, ESRI ArcMap 9.3 and Microsoft Excel 2007. The September 21-23, 2010 inspection <br />Page 10 of 22