[Federal Register Volume 64, Number 6 (Monday, January 11, 1999)]
[Notices]
[Pages 1638-1639]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 99-489]
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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Bureau of Land Management
[WY-030-1320-00 [WYW139975]]
Ark Land Company Coal Lease Application, Carbon County, WY
AGENCY: Bureau of Land Management, Interior.
ACTION: Notice of Availability of Final Environmental Impact Statement
(FEIS).
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SUMMARY: Pursuant to 40 CFR 1500-1508, the Bureau of Land Management
announces the availability of the FEIS for Ark Land Company Coal Lease
Application (WYW139975) in the Green River-Hams Fork Coal Production
Region of Wyoming.
DATES: Written comments on the FEIS will be accepted for thirty (30)
days following the date the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
publishes their Notice of Availability in the Federal Register. We
expect EPA will publish that notice on January 8, 1999.
ADDRESSES: Please address questions, comments, or requests for copies
of the FEIS to Field Manager, Rawlins Field Office, Bureau of Land
Management, P.O. Box 2407, 1300 North Third Street, Rawlins, Wyoming
82301.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Brenda Vosika Neuman, Project Team
Leader, or John Spehar, Planning and Environmental Coordinator, at the
above address or by telephone at 307-328-4200.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Pursuant to 43 CFR 3425.1, Ark Land Company,
St. Louis, Missouri (Ark), filed an application with the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) on September 20, 1996, to obtain a coal lease on
4145.15 acres of Federal coal lands located in Carbon County, Wyoming.
The lease application area is located within the Carbon Basin Coal
Project Area approximately 5 miles northwest of the town of Elk
Mountain and 12 miles southeast of the town of Hanna. The Project Area
encompasses 18,360 acres of intermingled Federal, State, and private
lands.
[[Page 1639]]
Based upon BLM's recommendation, Ark amended their application to
include an additional 1280 acres of Federal land containing
approximately 59 million tons of in-place coal reserves and deleted 190
acres of Federal land which either contained no recoverable coal or
were unsuitable for coal mining. These modifications to the lease tract
were made to enable preparation of a reasonable underground mine plan
with enough reserves for a new mine start. Ark's amended Federal coal
lease application contains a total of 5235.15 acres and approximately
149.7 million tons of in-place coal. There are an estimated 235.9
million tons of private and State coal within the Project Area.
Coal mining would be conducted by Arch of Wyoming, Inc. (Arch), an
affiliate of Ark, if it is successful in obtaining a Federal coal lease
in the proposed Project Area. Arch has operated coal mines in the Hanna
Basin Region of Carbon County since 1972.
The FEIS analyzes two alternatives in detail--the Proposed Action
and a No Action Alternative. Under the Proposed Action, the preferred
alternative, the BLM would hold a competitive lease sale for surface-
minable and underground-minable Federal coal. The Proposed Action
analyzes leasing Federal coal for both the Elk Mountain surface mining
operation and the Saddleback Hills underground mining operation and
examines 10 options for transporting coal to processing/loadout
facilities. The No Action Alternative analyzes no leasing of any
Federal coal in the Project Area. A ``no mining'' alternative (no
mining of any Federal, State, or private coal in the Project Area) is
not analyzed in detail. Seventy-nine percent of the surface-minable
coal within the Project Area is privately owned and BLM believes that
the private surface coal could be economically mined even if the
Federal coal were not leased. If no Federal coal were leased, the non-
Federal underground coal reserves would be uneconomical to mine because
of the difficulty of mining small tracts of intermingled private and
State coal.
The United States Department of Interior, Office of Surface Mining
(OSM) is a cooperating agency in the preparation of the EIS. OSM is the
Federal agency that administers surface coal mining under the Surface
Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. The Draft Environmental
Impact Statement was made available to the public on August 7, 1998.
Thirteen written comment letters were received on the draft document.
They are included, with the responses, in Chapter 8.0 of the FEIS.
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Comments, including names and street addresses
of respondents, will be available for public review at the address
listed above during regular business hours (7:45 a.m.--4:30 p.m.),
Monday through Friday, except holidays. Individual respondents may
request confidentiality. If you wish to withhold your name or street
address from public review or from disclosure under the Freedom of
Information Act, you must state this prominently at the beginning of
your written comment. Such requests will be honored to the extent
allowed by law. All submissions from organizations or businesses, and
from individuals identifying themselves as representatives or officials
of organizations or businesses, will be made available for public
inspection in their entirety.
Dated: December 31, 1998.
Alan R. Pierson,
State Director.
[FR Doc. 99-489 Filed 1-8-99; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4310-22-U
