Modern miners go high-tech in quest for gold

Camp caretaker Gary Rhinerault shows off the South Fork of the Stanislaus River, where he dredges for gold. Amy Alonzo Rozak, The Union Democrat, copyright 2009

At the Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association’s Italian Bar Mine recently, RVs were scattered at riverside campsites. Mostly retired men with varying lengths of gray beards were playing cards, reading paperback novels or enjoying the surging river’s sounds.
 

 But with gold hovering between $900 to $1,000 an ounce and unemployment soaring to double digits, don’t be fooled by the lackadaisical nature of these gold seekers. Once the river calms in the coming weeks, they will zip up their wetsuits, immerse themselves in the river and dredge the river’s rocky bottom for gold left behind by the original gold rushers.

“There were 75 people down here on Memorial Day weekend,” camp caretaker Gary Rhinerault said, adding that longtime visitors said it was the most they’d seen at the mine.

Suction dredge season on many California rivers opened on Memorial Day weekend and runs through the summer. This time frame was set in the early 1990s by the California Department of Fish and Game to avoid fall-run salmon spawning season, said Mark Stopher, Fish and Game environmental program manager.

But dredging rules could soon change, or the practice could be banned, depending on an ongoing environmental review of current regulations and legislation to ban the practice — both of which coincide with recent heightened concern over depleting salmon runs that have put many commercial fishermen out of work.

The controversial sport, hobby or livelihood of suction dredging for gold is the new gold miners’ chosen technique.

“Suctioning opens up areas that haven’t been mined,” Rhinerault said. “Some dredge in holes 20-feet deep.”

Rhinerault pointed to his suction dredge from the riverbank, which was tied to trees and rocks so it wouldn’t be swept downstream with the rushing rapids.

"The water is too fast right now,” he said. “I don’t want to go in.”

If he did get in, Rhinerault explained, the contraption would work like an underwater vacuum cleaner. He’d dive into the river’s depths, hooked to a breathing apparatus, and suck river rock through a long, wide hose powered by a gasoline generator. The rock would run through a sluice box, where the gold, because it’s heavy, would separate from other minerals.

He picked the spot, about a quarter-mile upstream from the camp along a narrow dirt trail, because the rock has signs of iron, and often where you find iron you find gold, he said.

Once the river slows, there will be about a dozen dredges on the 160 acres of deeded gold property that Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association members can utilize along the river. Also, up and down stream, people can work the river by getting a permit through the California Department of Fish and Game.

Last year, about 3,500 suction dredge permits were issued by Fish and Game, Stopher said. Of those, about 500 permits were issued to out-of-state gold seekers.

For Columbia’s Ken Valenta, who’s a member of the Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association, suction dredging has become a family affair he shares with his 12-year-old son, Nicholas.

“It was a lot of fun,” Valenta said of the busy Memorial Day weekend at the camp. Unfortunately no one got rich because the river was too high to dredge properly, he added.
 Most won’t get rich from dredging, but there is plenty of gold left in area streams, Rhinerault said.

“We do OK,” he added.

Valenta headed north recently to work other streams, but once the Stanislaus River calms, Valenta and Rhinerault will dive its depths to suction the gold left behind.

“I couldn’t ask for a better environment,” Rhinerault said.

For Valenta and Rhinerault, the modern-prospector lifestyle they’ve chosen is more than a hobby — it’s a livelihood.

Valenta retired a few years back so he could quench his gold fever. Rhinerault also recently retired and has devoted his now-open schedule to dredging West Coast waters.

“It’s quite different than working for a corporation,” said Rhinerault. He added that probably half the men in the Lost Dutchman camp will remain all season long to earn or supplement a living.

The two men’s newfound livelihood, some say for good reason, could be stripped by current state legislation that looks to ban suction dredging in California streams until Fish and Game finishes a court-ordered state environmental impact review of the practice.

The legislation is led by state Sen. Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, in response to the commercial salmon fishing season being closed for a second straight year because of meager fall salmon runs in Northern and Central California rivers.

Wiggins, along with fishing and environmental groups, said suction dredging is destructive to salmon spawning grounds.

Suction dredgers say there is no proof it harms spawning salmon, especially because spawning season and dredging season do not coincide.

There are studies that support both claims.

A study by Peter Moyle, of the University of California, Davis, and Walt Duffy, of Humboldt State University, concluded: “Suction dredging represents a chronic unnatural disturbance of natural habitats that are already likely to be stressed by other factors and can therefore have a negative impact on fish that use the reach being dredged.”

But there are just as many studies that conclude that suction dredging has little effect on salmon spawning grounds.

“This is a classic instance why we must use the precautionary principle to guide decisions,” Wiggins said. “We must err on the side of the fish, because their survival is at stake.”

“It simply doesn’t make sense to jeopardize an entire fishery, and to ask commercial fishermen to halt all fishing, while allowing status quo for a recreational hobby,” she added.

For some, though, suction dredging is more than a hobby.

"Let’s have a hearing and take a look at what you’re concerned about,” said Dave McCracken, president of the New 49ers Club, a group similar to the Lost Dutchman’s Association. “We’ll mitigate. But to put an entire industry out of business without any data whatsoever concerning any species being impacted?”

“Both sides have valid points,” said Stopher, of Fish and Game. “The existing regulations, we believe, need to be revisited,” he added.

So far, legislators are lining up against the miners. Two weeks back, the state Senate voted 31-8 to approve the ban. State Sens. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, and Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, represented two of the eight votes against the ban.   

The bill now sits in the state Assembly for consideration, where it could sit for a long time because of budget battles consuming the legislatures, McCracken said. If the Assembly approved the bill, it would have to be signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed a similar bill in 2007.

“We’ve already been through the full environmental review process — three times in 1994 and the first two were rejected,” McCracken said. “Virtually every impact from the results was addressed — really addressed — I mean beat up at two-dozen stake holders meetings.” 

The current battle began in 2005 when the Karuk Tribe, based in Happy Camp, near the Oregon border, sued Fish and Game to force the department to overhaul its suction dredging rules.

The tribe, whose members still fish for salmon in the Klamath River with traditional nets, argued that suction dredging was adding to the already dire salmon runs on the Klamath River.

The court ordered Fish and Game to complete a California Environmental Quality Act review before it acted. That review was scheduled to take 18 months and be completed by July 2008, but the department is just beginning.

Stopher said the consulting firm has recently been hired to oversee the review. Most likely, he said, existing regulations will be changed in January of 2011. 

“We fully believe we will be making changes,” said Stopher, adding that new evidence of spawning fish within the dredging season could cause closures of certain streams during dredging season.

McCracken said he doesn’t have a problem with another review. But he fears that if the current legislation to ban dredging until the review is completed goes through, the review will never be completed and suction dredging will disappear in California.

If dredging were banned it would mean lost tourist dollars for many counties, including Tuolumne County, opponents of the ban say.  

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors recently approved a letter against the ban.

Either way, with many livelihoods at stake, both sides seem dug in for a long battle.

"I’m terrified once we’re shutdown, the CEQA process will never be finished — ever — it will be the end,” McCracken said.