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Title: Western Energy Company's Rosebud Mine, Area D, Rosebud County, Montana

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5881991

Development of a surface mine in a unit of the existing Rosebud Mine, Rosebud County, Montana is proposed. The 3073-acre unit, known as Area D, lies one mile northeast of the town of Colstrip. Of the entire area, 2457 acres would be bonded for mining-level disturbance, 48 acres for facilities-level disturbance, and 568 acres for associated disturbance. The project would involve strip mining Area D with a dragline, first digging a long boxcut alongside the Rosebud cropline. Mining then would advance west and north in a semicircular pattern. Before any overburden excavation, scrapers would strip the soil, removing six to eight inches of topsoil and two feet of subsoil. The overburden then would be blasted with explosives and stripped down to the Rosebud coal seam. Seventeen-cubic-yard shovels would load the coal into 120-ton trucks. The trucks would haul the coal to Area E facilities, where the coal would be crushed before stockpiling or loading onto trains. No new facilities would be required at Area D except for a 200-foot-long haul road overpass across the Burlington Northern railroad. Mining would take place over 18 years at an average rate of 3.8 million tons annual. Operations would begin in 1985. All land within the mining area would be reclaimed.

Research Organization:
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Denver, CO (USA). Western Technical Center
OSTI ID:
5881991
Report Number(s):
EIS-85-0399(Final); OSM-EIS-19
Resource Relation:
Other Information: EPA No. 850378F; DOI
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English