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iii iiiiiiiiiiiuiii 999 STATE OF COLORADO Roy Romer, Gove DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES MINED LAND RECLAMATION DIVISION FRED R. BANTA, Director February 25, 1988 Mr. Dennis Burns Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Suite 310 625 Silver Avenue, SW Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102 Re: North Thompson Creek Mine Phase I Bond Release Snowmass Coal Company Permit No. C-025-81 Dear Mr. Burns: The Division has completed its evaluation of the above referenced bond release request. The final outstanding issue pertained to the restoration of 2 acres of prime farmland taken out of production due to construction of an access road. As you know, the landowner has requested that the road be retained in order to provide better access to the ranching operations. However, due to the regulatory requirement that all prime farmland be restored, the Division proposes to retain y}5 ,000.00 of the bond amount in order to ensure the affected lands will be protected. Our bond calculations indicate that this is more than enough to remove the road base and redistribute the stockpiled soils. At the operator's request we are not imposing any deadlines for doing the restoration work. The Federal rules have a prime farmland restoration exemption in Section 823.12. Unfortunately the rule was remanded by District Court Judge Flannery in 1984, a subsequent appeal was also remanded in 1987. In his decision he admits "an across - the - board application of (prime farmland) requirements, without an exemption for surface facilities that are actively used over extended periods of time but affect minimal amount of land, was found to be arbitrary and capricious". "(OSM) sites the need for flexibility and this court is sensitive to that concern". "However, the Secretary, at the very least, must provide guidelines limiting the scope of this exemption." Our conversation with the OSM Western Technical Center indicated that new rules on prime farmland may not be reproposed for quite some time. In the meantime the bond will remain in place and the soil stockpiles at the site will be protected. 423 Centennial Building, 1313 Sherman Street Denver, Colorado 80203-2273 Tel. (303) c.