Supervisors vote to support dredge mining

By Dale Andreasen, Daily News, January 26, 2009

Yreka, Calif. - By two unanimous votes, members of the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors showed their support for county suction dredge miners at last Tuesday’s regular board meeting.

Most of these miners search for gold in the Klamath River around the Happy Camp area. Many are members of the New 49ers recreational gold mining organization.

In the first action, the board adopted a resolution opposing emergency rulemaking by the California Department of Fish and Game to shut down suction dredge mining countywide while it updates its environmental analyses with a $1.5 million grant to complete a new Environmental Impact Report.

The new rule, promoted by a petition from fishing interests and environmental groups including the Karuk Tribe, California Trout, Friends of the North Fork, Sierra Fund and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, would immediately suspend or substantially limit suction dredge mining pending completion of the renewed EIR process.

“This is an issue that we have fought over and over again,” district 5 Supervisor Marcia Armstrong said at the meeting. She said that Fish and Game has tried to shut down the miners through repeated legislative attempts. The courts have ruled that an EIR should be done.

“Mining does not occur when fish are spawning,” Armstrong continued. “Some studies even show that suction dredge mining actually helps create better conditions for salmon.”

There is currently a petition before Fish and Game requesting an emergency halt to suction dredge mining until the EIR is completed. Fish and Game is required to make its decision on the petition by this week.

“The reason we’re being demonized is because we’re the last bastion of freedom,” said Ken Oliver, who has been mining for 30 years. He called dredge mining a “great economic benefit to the county.”

Michael Higby, a member of the New 49ers who lives in Oregon but pays taxes in Siskiyou County, said, “I’ve never seen any harm to even a single fish.”

Board chair Michael Kobseff said that he, too, supports the suction dredge miners. The resolution that was adopted read in part, “Therefore, be it resolved that the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors believes that careful consideration [and studies] of the positive and negative impacts asserted to arise from suction dredge mining …should be completed …prior to any revisions to the existing suction dredge mining regulations…”

The board then directed natural resources policy specialist Ric Costales to prepare a letter to the director of the California Department of Fish and Game (CDF&G) transmitting the resolution and expressing the board’s opposition to rulemaking prior to the completion of appropriate CEQA processes.

Costales presented his letter to Donald Koch, director of CDF&G in Sacramento, asking him to deny the petition based upon the fact that there is no emergency, that the petition presents no scientific evidence of harm done to fish by suction dredge mining and that an emergency rule forcing a halt or severe cutback in suction dredge mining poses “a severe detrimental impact on both the county and state economies.”

Costales quoted the conclusion of a 1997 EIR study done by CDF&G: “The effects of suction dredging would appear to be less than significant and not deleterious to fish.”

The letter was approved unanimously by the board.