2013-02-04_REVISION - C1981008 (3)

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JoEllen Turner 970 - 864 -7682 p.2 Borch Environmental Pollution Consulting, LLC October Z 2012 REBUTTAL The following rebuttal has been completed by Dr. Thomas Borch, Professor of Environmental Soil Chemistry in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University (C SU) and Professor of Analytical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at CSU and the opinions expressed herein are my opinions and no others. Response to the Reports of R. Dunker and A. Dejoia: Long-term crop yield and yield test success: 1) Please present evidence in form of a peer-reviewed publication that shows consistently and significantly higher corn or alfalfa yield over a time frame longer than 10 years as compared to an un -mined baseline or background soil similar to the soil on the mined property before mining. Even if Mr. Dunker is able to provide evidence for higher yields on selected reclaimed soils it does not change the fact that only 41% of the Prime Farmland Soils investigated by Dunker and others passed the yield test in the 10 year liability period. Specifically, in a paper by R.A. Stout (Stout, R. A., Prime farmland variability in meeting post - mining yield targets. Coal Research Ctr, Southern Illinois Univ: Carbondale, 1998; p 48 -59.) The following was stated in the conclusion: "I have reported on an observational study of what actually happened or, at least, of what was recorded by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Department of Agriculture ( DOA). The reported results summarise years of experience for Prime Farmland (PF) fields in the Illinois Permanent Program. When I started, I expected to find that very few PF fields had passed the yield test in the 10 year liability period. The 41% is still disappointingly low, but the pass rate is higher than I expected. My results, based on observational data, confirm what other studies using experimental data have shown." In addition, it should be mentioned that the soils in Illinois are very different from the semi -arid soils in western Colorado. Please also provide corn/alfalfa yield data for a reclaimed soil similar to the soil on the Morgan property, if possible. The opinion that the Morgan property can be successfully reclaimed appears subject to significant doubt, as research on reclaimed fields investigated by Mr. Dunker and others would suggest. 2) The bulk of the research authored by Mr. Dunker since 1982 was funded by the mining industry, suggesting that Mr. Dunker may have a bias in his opinions towards the industry. E.g., Dunker, R. E,; Jansen, I. J.; Thorne, M. D., Corn response to irrigation on surface -mined land in western illinoisI. Agron. J. 1982, 74, 411 -414. In this paper the following ACKNOWLEDGMENTS were included: llPage PLTF 002475