US Supreme court refuses to re-hear 9th Circuit opinion on Dredging

[Reno Chris 101]

The US supreme court has refused to hear a decision on a case where the 9th circuit court of appeals held that the US Forrest Service must consult with US government wildlife authorities before allowing any dredging in the Coho Salmon critical habitat in northern California. It was argued that the mining law took precedent in this case. Any future dredging in this area will require a full blown species impact assessment that could delay a dredge permits there for years. The concern is that this precident may lead to similar shut downs of dredging in any waterway in the west where an endangered species may live.

For more info see:

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-political-economy?oid=182609&sn=Detail

 

 

[Aubrey C 0]

Sooo,  what to do about dredging in California ?   Maybe you can clear up some suggestions from my fellow prospectors,   Regarding LEGAL dredging .  Some say one can run a water powered dredge by running hose up the waterway and capture the pressure..but NO MOTOR present.   Others say you can run a motor,  but not have a sluice present and run the sucked up material into a screened container located to an accessible area where you can recover the concentrates for panning.   Any of this make sense ?

Or otherwise...  is there any way to legally use our dredges ?

[Reno Chris 101]

I am no attorney, but reading the Calif. rules, they define a dredge as having a motor and a sluice (see the actual definition for more detail). If you dont have a motor, you dont have a dredge. If you dont have a sluice you dont have a drege.

 

You may be subject to other regulations and like I say, I'm no attorney so I dont give legal advice. This is just my personal opinion.

 

The motor with no sluice thing seems to be something that would work when all the gold is right on bedrock and in crevices. You would drege off the overburden and then collect the material right on bedrock or in crevices.

 

The no motor thing requires enough fall in the river such that the gravel could be sucked by water vacuum. and then run through a sluice. For the most part, the bigger rivers of CA - the Yuba, American, Feather and other systems dont have that much fall to make this type of operation practical. However a number of the side stream tributaries to these rivers do have that kind of fall.

[John Oates 9]

Once a right is lost it is 100,000 times harder to reaquire. ALL forms of gravity,barrel,blasting have been covered in the 28 page document submitted to CDFG by the Karuk,environutz and fishermen coalition  to ban all .a-As in everything in every form iniated on the first of april-thank Stopher the CENSORED and the clubs  internet posting of all the facts, for the environutz to see ,of what we have been up to for the past 4 years to circumvent these insane regs. Like I've always said-clean,quiet,small and prosper and DON"T march into your enemies camp and go nananana look what I'm doing complete with pics and instructions sic sic sic stupid stupid stupid as usual for some-John

[jeff08xx 3]

Just go green and get a wind turbine that drives a water pump and kill birds instead while you are dredging, i guess...

[rockcrawler88 3]

That gave me a chuckle for a second!

[K Rose 25]

Don,t know about wind turbines but Outback Solar Solutions will sell you a small water turbine designed to operate underwater in small streams,or you can go larger.Sounds like a patent in the making.

[Ricky D N 7]

Lets get to the real core of this problem Salmon and there habitat have been destroyed by commercial over fishing and dams, deforestation, modern mining has almost nothing to do with it!! Here in WA state the corp of engineers did a study to determine the ecological impact of dredging on the environment !! WOW was that smart or what, there finding's were as I had thought the use of a 5inch or smaller dredge caused no impact on the rivers and streams it was used in and no longer requires  a special application to use a dredge of that size, all you need now is to follow the new 2009 rules of the gold and fish pamphlet and have them onsite with you, and if you are panning or running a small high banker riffle area of 3 sq ft or less and using an electric pump to feed water to it you no longer need to have the gold and fish rules with you, The guys here in WA are finally using some forward thinking and now they have opened up the pacific ocean and beaches of Wa State for placer mining, I don't know what is wrong with the other states but here in liberal Wa  we are wild and free like the fishes in the sea!!!

[Doug W1 0]

All is not roses here in WA either. When they re did the Fish & Gold book they also just about wiped out the dredge season in a lot of places. Two week season? Open through the winter when the snows too deep to even get close to the water? You also can't get any material out of the wetted area, except for during dredging season which isn't even open on a lot of streams, so that wipes out most of the crevicing. THEY didn't open up the beaches. WE spent about eight years working through the system to get the beaches opened up. We're still fighting battles daily just to keep operating. We still are fighting the intimidation practices some of the Forest Service officials are using.