Dave Mack

“Your comments are needed!”

 

The California State Water Resources Board is requesting comments from the public regarding the effects of suction dredge mining on water quality. Based upon the comments, the Water Board will assess the available information to evaluate a possible further course of action. You can link to the Water Board’s Notice here.

This is a very important matter to the future of our industry. The outcome of this will either help or hurt gold dredgers in California!

We believe that some of the most productive input prospectors can provide to the Water Board are the conclusions from multiple studies which have already proven that suction dredge activity within existing California regulations does not create any significant negative impact upon water quality.

To help with this, a very qualified fish biologist has taken the time to compile for us many of the important conclusions into a report which you can copy from. Those conclusions can be found here.

The Water Board’s Notice requests comments to be sent by email to the following address: commentletters@waterboards.ca.gov Comments are being accepted until 12 PM on June 22. The subject line of your email should read, “Comment Letter – Suction Dredge Mining

Please take a moment to send in your comments on behalf of suction dredgers. Because I can guarantee that our adversaries will be submitting material with the hope of shutting us down!

Please don’t copy all of the conclusions into your comments. It is better to just copy those sections which give support to the arguments which you personally want to make. It is good if you make your own arguments, and then copy over the citations which reinforce your position. This way, everyone is not just sending in the very same report!

Note: The citations which you want to copy are the ones that include the source of the information inside parenthesis. Here’s an example: Dredge mining had little, if any, impact on water temperature (Hassler, T.J., W.L. Somer and G.R. Stern, 1986).

The citations in the report will carry weight, because they originate from published results. If you don’t know how to copy and paste material off the Internet, please click here.

As an example, here is a copy of the comments which I personally sent in. They relay some of my own experiences concerning water quality, and they use some of the compiled citations to reinforce my view.

Important: You must include your name and address on your comments! Comments are generally not accepted by anonymous persons! Please keep your comments civilized, and please keep them focused upon the subject of how dredging affects water quality. That is the only thing they will consider in these comments!

The open hearing on this matter is scheduled for 10 AM on 12 June at the Resources Building, First Floor Auditorium, 1416 9th Street in Sacramento. Being there is not as important as sending in written comments, but it would be a good thing to have a big showing of support at the hearing if you can make it!

The main thing is to please draft some comments and send them in!

Thank you very much for your help in this matter!

Dave McCracken The New 49’ers

The New 49’ers27 Davis Road, Happy Camp, CA 96039 (530) 493-2012

www.goldgold.com

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