Gold-hunting enthusiasts and some local officials say the California Department of Fish and Game’s proposal to limit dredging permits to 1,500 is excessively strict. At the same time, the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center has joined a multi-party lawsuit trying to block the regulations saying they don’t go far enough and will lead to degradation of the state’s waterways.
The regulations were released earlier this year in the midst of a multi-year moratorium on suction dredging. The state imposed the moratorium in 2009 on dredging, which uses a motorized vacuum pump system to prospect in streams more efficiently than panning and sluicing manually.
Regulators were responding to a court order after environmental groups raised concerns that dredging harms fish populations by stirring up the gravel beds where they spawn.
The new regulations would cut permits for dredging by more than half in 2016, with 1,500 allowed on a first-come, first-served basis. Permit holders must submit annual reports, and if they violate the terms of the permit, they risk losing their permission to dredge for two years.
Multiple gold enthusiasts said last week the new regulations would definitely affect activities at the prospecting camp on the Italian Bar of the Stanislaus River. The camp is owned by the Lost Dutchman Mining Association and open to members of the organization.
Members at the camp on Friday were unhappy with the proposed rules across the board, saying the activity has always been heavily regulated.
“We follow all the rules now,” said Richard Campbell, a retiree and prospecting enthusiast from Tulare who visits Italian Bar regularly.
Campbell, as well as pro-mining organizations like the Western Mining Alliance and Public Lands for the People, have maintained the practice does not harm rivers or hurt fish populations. Campbell said prospectors who use suction dredges are not large-scale operations getting rich off gold.
He said most people who visit the camp and look for gold elsewhere in the state are doing it as a fun, family-friendly activity. Campbell said he believes a lot of people picture heavy duty equipment and harmful activities like the hydraulic mining of the 1800s when they hear about dredging, not the compact vacuum systems they use.
“These are mom and pop operations,” he said.
Tina and Rick Moore are caretakers at the Italian Bar camp. Both said they wonder how much access those mom-and-pop dredgers will even have with the limited system, especially if the state increases the price for permits as well.
“The weekend miners aren’t going to be able to do it,” Tina Moore said. “For some people, this is their liveli hood.”
That wouldn’t be so bad from the perspective of some environmental and tribal organizations. CSERC announced last week that it is part of a lawsuit filed April 2 to overturn the regulations. In a release, CSERC Director John Buckley said environmental documents that came out as the state formed the regulations showed the dredging process does have detrimental effects on rivers.
The organizations are seeking stricter regulations, and claim the rules as they are proposed would not offer enough protection.
“The vast majority of people who come to our local region to experience rivers don’t enjoy rivers turned to mud or noisy pumps blaring for hours,” Buckley stated.
Last week, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Fish and Game officials asking them to reconsider some of the terms of the regulations. In the letter, the board says the issue is “a priority” locally, since the county is one of more than two dozen than have a history of gold prospecting.
The letter also raises issue with the relatively-short comment period for the regulations — less than a month. It also cites concerns from a mining rights organization, the Western Mining Alliance, that the rules will “potentially limit miners the ability to mine on privately owned property.”
“These issues are best settled by working together collaboratively in a way that supports the rights of claim owners as well as proactively protecting the environment,” the board states in the letter.
