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Is This Reclamation Good Enough? <br /> The State and Federal reclamation laws and regulations require that all <br /> sites be adequately reclaimed, no matter the value of the bond. If adequate <br /> reclamation of this site costs $5 million, the law requires MCR to provide for that <br /> level of reclamation. <br /> Would reclamation of this site be adequate if the project is not allowed to <br /> proceed along the course laid out by DMG? My answer is absolutely not. <br /> Would reclamation of this site be adequate if the project is allowed to <br /> proceed along the course laid out by DMG? Yes, but only just barely. The <br /> above analysis shows that the bond was inadequate. The budget was <br /> obviously inadequate to achieve even average reclamation (mainly because <br /> the project has been dragged out and inflation has taken its toll) but the DMG <br /> has scraped up sufficient additional funds to provide average reclamation. <br /> It would be preferable if sufficient monies were available to allow better <br /> than average reclamation. An additional $600,000 to $700,000 over and above <br /> all the other add-ons (which is the sum of the amounts attributable to inflation <br /> and under-budgeting for maintenance) would probably be sufficient to increase <br /> the quality of reclamation from average to better than average. <br /> The bottom line is that this is probably a $4.6 million to $4.7 million <br /> reclamation project (in 1999 dollars) at a minimum. MCR's efforts to curtail the <br /> project now should be stifled. <br /> It is my understanding that one of the things that has served to drag out <br /> the project is that the monies allocated to DMG to do this job have not been <br /> distributed as quickly as expected. And, the last $600,000 is being withheld by <br /> the trustee pending the outcome of the current litigation. In the meantime the <br /> 14 <br />