[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