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' ~II ~I~~IIII~~~~~ ~I~ ~ dFF CE STATE OF COLORADO DIVISION OF MINERALS AND GEOLOGY Depanmem of Natural Resources 1 313 Sherman Si.. Room 215 Denver. Colorado 80207 Phone: 13031886-3567 FA%: (3031 832-8106 September 8, 1997 Alan Parkerson Parkerson Construction, Inc. 710 South 15th Street Grand Junction, CO 81501 DENVER OFFICE ~~ PUBLIC FILE COPT( ~~~ FILE: M-8/-ZZ9 SITE: aCLey ,s u P, NATURAL (Prg~r- "3Z R«,d P;f'~ RESOURCES Foy Romer Governor dames S. Lochhead Execmrve Director michael B. Long Division Director RE: Valley Vista Pit, Permit No. M-81-229, Mesa County Dear Mr. Parkerson: This letter is in response to two recent items of correspondence received by our office from Parkerson Construction, Inc. The first item is a faxed copy of a request fora 10-day extension to the August 25, 1997 corrective action due dates set forth in the Division's June 17, 1997 inspection report for the Valley Vista Pit. The Division hereby grants the 10-day extension as requested. The second item of corresondence is dated August 26, 1997 and was received by our field office on August 29, 1997. This correspondence included adequate responses to the four corrective actions set forth in our 6-17-97 inspection report, therefore all corrective actions are now considered having been abated within the extended corrective action period. ~ Regarding your request to have the proposed haul road relocation processed as a technical revision and not an amendment, a review of the approved permit application documents indicates that the site has an existing haul road disturbance occupying a portion of the original 53 acre permit area. Since the addition of a new haul road in another location will affect additional land outside of the original 53 acre permitted area, it will be necessary to modify the existing permit to include the additional acreage. Since Rule 1 .1 161 of the Construction Materials Rules defines an amendment as "a change in the permit or an application which increases the acreage of the affected land, or which has a significant effect upon the approved or proposed Reclamation Plan", the addition of the new haul road segment to the approved permit clearly constitutes an amendment and not a technical revision. In the event the operator views the haul road relocation as an exchange of one permitted area for another, the Division has developed a written policy regarding how to process a request for an exchange of areas to be mined at a permitted mine site. If the operation for which an exchange request has been made meets certain criteria, then certain aspects of the permitting process can be handled as a technical revision (application feel. However, other aspects of the exchange process still need to be handled as an amendment (public notice & 90 day review periodl. The proposed haul road relocation at the Valley Vista Pit does not meet all of the exchange process criteria, therefore the modification must be handled as an amendment. One of the exchange criteria is that the exchange process can only be used in situations where the area to be taken out of the permit area was not affected by the operator. Since the original haul road location constitutes land affected by the 1