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Boulder County Land Use Courthouse Annex • 2045 13th Street • Boulder, Colorado 80302 • Tel 303 441 3930 • Fax 303 441.4856 Mailing Address: P 0 Box 471 • Boulder, Colorado 80306 • www.bouldercounty.org 1 November 2012 Bill Tenore T -Bone Stone, Inc. 2337 Emery St Longmont, CO 80503 Re: Illegal Mining Use at 1312 Steamboat Valley Rd. Dear Bill: AA- Q°c1 -1- 030 C N After further review of the materials you provided, it has been determined that the current mining use at 1312 Steamboat Valley Rd. is operating without the required Land Use approvals and therefore constitutes a violation of the Boulder County Land Use Code (hereinafter "the Code "). Per the Code, the use would be classified as an Open Mining Use under Article 4- 508(D) and therefore requires Special Use Review to bring the use into compliance. Further explanation of these findings is provided below. A letter from Ed Byrne, Esq., dated 10 September 2012, written on your behalf, stated that the operation located at 1312 Steamboat Valley Rd (hereinafter "the use ") should be considered an exception to the requirements for a Limited Impact Open Mining Operation under Article 4- 508(A) of the Code. However, the use described in your 112(c) Construction Materials Reclamation Permit Conversion Application to the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board (provided with the letter from Mr. Byrne) does not meet the requirements for Limited Impact Open Mining or qualify for an exception to these regulations. Rather, the use must be reviewed through the Special Use Review process for Open Mining (Article 4- 508(D)) for the following reasons: 1. Staff finds that the use is not an existing non - conforming use, but rather an illegal use operating without the required approvals. Based upon a review of aerial photography, the mine appears to have been in operation since 2004 without any Land Use approvals. New mining uses such as the subject operation were required to obtain Special Use approval under the Code in 2004, as they do currently. The subject use commenced without approvals during a time when approvals were required and therefore the operation is illegal as opposed to being eligible for consideration as a legally nonconforming use as stated in the letter from Mr. Byrne. 2. Based upon the information provided, Staff finds that the use constitutes an Open Mining Use (requiring Special Use Review) and not a Limited Impact Open Mining Use due to the scale of the operation. Article 4- 508(A) of the Land Use Code defines Limited Impact Open Mining as: "The extraction of earth materials by mining directly from the exposed deposits or other materials where mining operations affect less than ten acres of land within a parcel and extract less than 70,000 tons of earth materials, and which (a) proposes to export material in excess of 500 cubic yards off the parcel on which the mining occurs, Page 1 of 3