Have we got a plan!

          We awoke to snowfall, made a trip to Rapid City in fog and snow, returned to the Northern Hills to find the snow had abated only to have it start snowing big, fluffy flakes most of the afternoon.  The temps are moderate, however, hovering in the 30s.

          We were happy to receive feedback from our contact at the U.S. Forest Service today (Monday).

          Before I go into the feedback, let me state that Bob had a pretty good idea what not to try for in this mining permit process.  That left us with a pretty feasible plan and avoided all sorts of pitfalls in the permit process.  We’ve seen a few applications throughout the years, both large and small scale.  We knew that to try for a permit this year, we had to keep it simple.

Our feedback was stated as questions regarding “map showing areas of surface interests.”  Specifically, it addressed a buffer zone around the creek, ATPs (culverts), known plant occurrences, potential plant habitat and a known snail colony....

A lot of this Bob already knew and we had addressed in both the Notice of Intent to D.E.N.R. and Plan of Operation to the U.S. Forest Service.  We avoided trying to mine in the creek, chose an area with few trees and limited varieties of plan life… the snails were a surprise but their habitat was not within the proposed disturbance area, so did not change our plan.

So, other than a buffer zone around one culvert and its drainage, we’ve got a good Plan of Operation.  Next step is completion of an environmental analysis and hopefully, final submittal of the Plan of Operation.