Chris Krejci

- Active Ore Mines with NPDES Permits

Tom,

Nevada

There are approximately 197 mines in NV. 67 are covere d under NV's mining SW general permits. 4 of these also have individual NPDES permit for discharge of dewat ering water. The 130 mines without SW permits operate under a State issued groundwater permit only, and do not discharge to surface waters.

Attached is the list of facilities subject to the mine permit. All are covered under the General Permit. A ll are
minors, and I believe all are Active.

The new permit (issued 6/07 ) requires that facilities monitor discharges from waste rock at least once/yr for the following parameters. pH, Total Dissolved Solids, Phosphorus, Alkalinity (Total CaCO3), Bi carb (HCO3), Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, Aluminum, Antimony, Beryllium, Chlori de, Flouride, Nickel, Nitrate (as total nitrogen), Sulfate, Arsenic, Barium, Cadmium, Chromium, Copper, Iron, Lead, Manganese, Mercury, Selenium, Silver, Thallium, Zinc.

EPA has not received any data for monitoring from the n ew permit, although the mines should have started collecting data this spring and the data should now be available at NDEP.

The previous general permit did not require SW efflu ent monitoring. However, the permit did require th at the permittees conduct a monitoring plan assessment. Man y of the mines conducted an assessment using the Meteoric Water Mobility Test of the waste rock, which shou ld indicate the quality of water flowing off the min e site based on natural conditions. I am sending you the compendium of this assssement that we required NDEP to provide us (which we used as a justification to force the next permit to contain monitoring); some of which contains useful monitoring data. I am sending this bin der of materials to you for review, but I'll need it b ack at some point.

Several permits have required monitoring data (mostly to comply with Forest Service requirements thru the EIS )
and I have this data for 4 mines that I am also sendin g you.

California

CA has 24 sites with NOIs. We do not have any of this da ta. Attached is the NOI information. I know that several are inactive, but I do not have a list of active vs . inactive sites.

Monitoring: Permit only requires monitoring for To tal suspended solids (TSS) pH, specific conductance, and From: <Tinger.John@epamail.epa.gov>

To: Born.Tom@epamail.epa.gov

Date: 7/24/2009 8:50 PM Subject: Active Ore Mines with NPDES Permits

CC: Hillenbrand.John@epa.gov; Eleanor.Codding@erg.com; Chris.Krejci@erg.com;..

. Attachments: Nevada mine sites SW permit.xls; CA mine site SW NOIs.xls; ar_data.mdb Page 1 of 2

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...either total organic carbon (TOC) or Oil and Grease f or all industrial facilities. For copper mines, there is

additional sampling required for (unexplainably) TSS; COD; and N+N.

Here is all the data CA has electronically for the MSG P . There are only a few mine sites, and limited data per permit requirements, so I dont think it will be much help.

Arizona

AZ uses the MSGP, so data is available for the EPA benc hmark values. We do not have any data from the past 5+ years, so that would have to come from ADEQ. I will get the full list of NOIs to you next week.

John Tinger U.S. EPA Region IX
NPDES Permits Branch
(415) 972-3518 Page 2 of 2

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