1985-02-19_REPORT - C1981012 (2)

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1.0 INTRODUCTION Wyoming Fuel Company (WFC) acquired the New Elk and Golden Eagle Mines in December, 1983. Prior to this acquisition, the mines were owned and operated by CF&I Steel Corporation and were known as the Allen and Maxwell Mines, respectively. During CF&I's permanent program permitting with the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Division, a number of stipulations requiring field data collection were placed on the permits. This report presents the results of the required studies associated with hydrology, particularly Stipulations 15 of the New Elk (NE) and 13 of the Golden Eagle (GE) permits which require the annual assessment of impacts to the hydrologic balance associated with underground mining and related surface activities. Also included in this report is a discussion of mitigative measures taken to minimize disturbance to area hydrologic functions and plans for future hydrology monitoring activities. Information which has been collected and utilized in this assessment includes: 0 Previously collected data and assessments provided in the mine permit applications submitted by CF&I in 1981; 0 Consumptive use of water for mining operations (Stipulations 1 NE and 3 GE); 0 Mine water inflow and discharge studies (Stipulations 13 NE and 11 GE); 0 Spring and Seep Survey (Stipulations 7, 8 and 9 NE and 4, 5 and 6 GE); 0 Area Water Users Survey (Stipulations 10 NE and 7 GE); 0 Assessment of coal refuse disposal (Stipulation 9 GE); and 0 Surface and groundwater baseline sampling (Stipulations 12 NE and 10 GE). Responses to these stipulations are presented as they were submitted to CMLRD and can be found in the Appendices of this report. As the mine permit areas are adjacent, many of the studies have been conducted for the entire area of both mines as opposed to assessing each facility separately. These studies with an assessment of the potential impacts of mining for the 1984 water year are presented in this report. -1-