Suction dredging is regulated - Work windows , allowed equipment and seasons are set by the same State biologists that regulate fish and wildlife. Without listing them all again I would direct your attention to page 1 of the Gold and Fish and continuing to the end of page 6. You will find 14 Federal, State, Local and Tribal authorities that have input into our activities.

Suction dredging is enforced - Each of the above mentioned authorities exert jurisdiction for enforcement over our activities. The penalties are not lax either. Catch one fish to many and y ou get a $100 ticket. Violate the guidelines of the Gold and Fish or your HPA and you lose your gear and face a potential $10k fine and imprisionment.

I completely fail to understand how you can say you "dont think we are regulated or enforced at all" unless you are either denying the obvious or choose to ignore it. Fortunately most other people DO THINK and can easily refute your baseless claims.

The mining regulations in California, Idaho and Oregon were created by BIOLOGISTS and they are LESS stringent than Washington.
The dredging moratoriums recently imposed are the creation of POLITICIANS swaying to environmental activists like you and have nothing to do with the regulations created by scientific finding.

Speaking of "baseless claims," I'm going to focus on just one of Dan's bits of twisted logic, half-truths, distortions, and plain falsehoods. In his dredger manifesto of 12:29 PM on February 27, Dan stated:

"Dredging does benefit the stream and that is a proven fact."

Compare that absurd bit of gold-miner propaganda with what actual fisheries biologists (with PhDs, Dan!) have concluded in the following three peer-reviewed, published reports. Even with all the usual qualifications that scientists use, there is a vast difference between what they've written and Dan's "proven fact." (Note to Dan: Politicians didn't write the following reports, did they? By the way, when is your course in Pretzel Logic being given at the community college where you teach dredging?)

1. "We encourage that suction dredge mining be prohibited or greatly reduced where sensitive fish stocks utilize reaches for spawning or where other sensitive life history stages are present."

Effects of Suction Dredge Mining on Oregon Fishes and Aquatic Habitats, Oregon Chapter, American Fisheries Society, April 2013.



2. "Dredging should be of special concern where it is frequent, persistent, and adds to similar effects caused by other human activities....Where threatened or endangered species exist, managers would be prudent to assume activities such as dredging are harmful unless proven otherwise."

Bret C. Harvey and Thomas E. Lisle, Effects of Suction Dredging on Streams; A Review and an Evaluation Strategy, Fisheries 23 (8), 8-17 (1999).




3. "Our results show that fisheries managers should consider the potential negative effects of dredge tailings on the spawning success of fall-spawning fish, such as chinook salmon and coho salmon. Streams with a shortage of natural substrate appropriate for spawning, a high potential for scour, and a low number of spawners deserve special attention. Where managers determine unstable dredge tailings may lead to unacceptable effects on spawning success, these effects could be reduced or eliminated through regulations that require that tailings piles be redistributed to restore the original bed topography and particle size distribution."

Bret C. Harvey and Thomas E. Lisle, Scour of Chinook Salmon Redds on Suction Dredge Tailings, North American Journal Fisheries Management, 19: 613-617, 1999. Published by the American Fisheries Society.




P.S. to Dan: Don't believe everything you think. You're probably a terrific dredger and nice guy, but critical thinking isn't one of your strengths. And if you're going to counter the quotes from the fisheries biologists with some dredger "science" of your own, please don't direct us to an article in Big Nugget magazine or tell us another personal story, even if it seems to reveal another one of your "proven facts." Your pronouncements on an issue of fisheries biology can't be given the same credence as reports by qualified, practicing fisheries biologists.

I guess all those Biologist with PHD's and the peers that reviewed those papers didn't use a spell check function.

Thanks, the report obviously read "or" rather than "our." Fix made.

Agree! Ive walked/waded as much river as anyone and as far as user groups are concerned; fisherman and boaters make up the heavy majority of users which I have witnessed. I can count on one hand; how many suction dredgers or even gold panners I have run across.

Smelt, Out of all the user groups along our rivers and streams, who has the biggest direct impact on the resource? CNR carries a certain mortality rate? Boaters drag anchor, leak fuel, poachers, etc..?

I would guess that dredging, done correctly has less impact than sport fishing and limited kill fisheries, just for the simple fact that there are tens of thousands of angler hours spent streamside , vs dredgers limited time on water??

I'm at a loss to understand why your qualified, practicing fisheries biologists are better than my qualified practicing fisheries biologists other than the fact that you don't like what mine say. We could do this all day but nothing would change and I doubt the members of this forum really want to watch you regurgitate on their screen daily. I am actually feeling pretty self conscious about stirring this much mud in their water, you are keeping your identity hidden so its not a issue for you.

(coincidentally readers - Smelt here has his very own Facebook page dedicated to the liberal oppression of anything he does not like (currently dredging). Go to the FB page "Fish not Gold" and read for yourself the incessant and one-sided preaching he is capable of spewing. I went there along with many other pro-mining people and we all posted comments and questions that questioned his propaganda. He immediately deleted our comments and banned us all from posting. Go there and see that only he and his couple friends are posting, all other comments are absent. It's disappointing to see someone get such expanded use of the 1st amendment and at the same time deny it to everyone who disagrees with him.)

Smelt - you are fooling no one. You are full of far left programming and capable of such eloquent put-downs but you insist on remaining completely anonymous and that destroys your credibility . You have to remain hidden because you just cant converse without ridicule and slander, a very liberal trait. Critical thinking not one of my strengths... good one.
When you are ready to come out of your horrible and lonely little closet and identify yourself, let me know.

FYI - there is very little gold on the Olympia peninsula and prospecting is completely banned inside the park. There were a few working gold mines inside what is now the ONP but once the park was created the mines had to close. The NPS then systematically deleted all written record of any mining activity inside the park boundaries to keep people from looking.

"Dredging done correctly" is what I teach, advocate and practice. Smelt seems hung up on what lawless dredgers "CAN" do to a stream.
It would be like me saying that all fishermen need to be regulated and restricted because they " CAN" snag salmon with treble hooks.

Last, when you are considering all of the user groups that have an impact, don't forget the Tribes....they take half of everything off the top. I wish I had a dollar for ever time I saw a tribal member selling kings out of the trunk of his car.

Here is a good article that describes how Gold Dredgers have made a positive impact on the habitat over many years.

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130224/OPINION/302240319&cid=sitesearch

Dan, please provide detailed references to reports published by the qualified, practicing fisheries biologists who have concluded that dredging's benefits to streams are, as you like to proclaim, a "proven fact." I'll read them. (Really.)

Also, Fish and Gold is not my Facebook page. I have no control over who posts there or reads it. But it is an excellent source of factual information to counter your pro-dredging fictions. Thanks for mentioning it again here.

As for calling me "far left," having "very liberal" characteristics, and practicing "liberal oppression" (excellent, Dan!), why stop there? What's next? Socialist, communist, drug addict, admirer of Saddam Hussein? I probably have a good idea of your political views, but they are not relevant to the discussion in this forum, so I'm not going to go there. But feel free to keep flailing away with your name-calling. I'll say them to the bathroom mirror to see the expression on my face when I actually hear them. It should be kinda fun!

Guess what? The author is "a board member and past president of the Northwest Mineral Prospector's Club." And he too refers to the "proven science" of dredging's benefits to wild fish. (Do you guys share the same phrasebook?)

Bonaro,

I don't really have a dog in this fight between you and Smelt, but you made several references to "liberal oppression," "left-wing agenda" and so forth. These kinds of remarks aren't winning you many friends if your goal is to persuade forum members that suction dredge mining is not harmful to stream habitat. Well it may score you some points among the few far right wing-nuts that inhabit this forum, but outside of politics you're only going to make headway here with well reasoned and supported arguments.

BTW, your retired EPA gold dredging scientists testament isn't very impressive to this reader.

Sg

Of course he is, what a silly observation. Did you completely miss the part where WDFW and the Forest Service CALLED HIM for help removing sediment? Who would be better suited to clean out that silt than a modern dredger? I guess since you hate our entire user group then we should not be allow to talk about out achievements, right?
The benefits of dredging are proven and how badly you hate that is irrelevant.

Salmo,
Noted and no offense intended to anyone on this board. I have been in this fight for years and not just for mining but for all land rights and user groups including fishermen. I have encountered the smelts of the world before and they are aggravating in their arrogance.
I have been open about my identity and try to not throw too much mud but Smelt is a person who belittles my education, achievements and unfortunately does it all anonymously to avoid all responsibility. He ignores or discredits any science I present not because it's wrong but because it doesn't support his goals. I would hope that your expectation of fair play is extended equally to all posters.

The EPA testaments are fueled by a lot of passion and frustration. If you were aware of all of the circles we were run in while fighting for our rights in California you would understand better where all that comes from. I don't see where it invalidates the quality of their science any more than it would for any other scientist

Bonaro,
Good job in pointing out the real innocence of dredging. Keep up the good work. Not sure why
people always insist in attacking what they don't understand. You do a great job of helping people understand dredging is not evil.

Thank you...it ain't easy.

To put this in perspective that this fishing board can directly relate to. lets just turn the tables. What if those who wish to protect fish were to say "Fishing is the leading cause of dead fish" and we need to close all steams to fishing to save them....which is not a hard thing to prove with a scientific report factory. Would the fishermen take this personal and fight back? How would they do that?

We all have to cooperate and work together or all of us will eventually lose.

The link below is to a report studying all possible effects of suction dredging on stream habitat, water quality and biota. It was prepared for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This may be far more than most want to read (86 pages) but it will certainly provide anyone interested with all the info they ever wanted about the impacts of gold dredging. One thing to remember is that this study was performed on the Fortymile river in Alaska. What they are studying is commercial gold dredging and the dredges there are 8", 10" and 12" class dredges. The largest dredge allowed in Washington is only a 5" hoze size.

Draw your own conclusions...

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/water_issues/pro...ussian_1999.pdf

.

Bonaro -
Not sure that the paper that you generously provided the link to makes your case of limited impacts to stream habitat, water quality and biota from dredging. I admit that I only quickly read the paper (to lazy to go through it in great detail.

However it is clear that the paper was looking at fishless streams (or at least did not consider direct impacts on fish resources. It should be obvious by now that most of many of our concerns are fish based. Further the authors were unable to tease out what the chronic effects from mining/dredging. Did returning to "original" conditions mean historic conditions pre-mining or what had become the new "norm"?

It is clear that while a year or so after the dredging activities things looked more or least "norm" there also short term and localized impacts. The importance of those impacts likely would vary depending on the specifics of the particular situation. A couple things that jumped out to me if there were co-existing fish populations was the release of heavy metals at the site (and downstream for some distance). Those heavy metals are lethal to fish eggs and young fry are surprising low concentration. Of further concern was the concentration of some of those metals in the insects. Not only what those metals might do to the potential biomass of insects but how those metals may be further concentrated in the fish communities that may exist in the same system.

The authors did say that there were reductions in the biomass of periphyton (the foundation of the food chain) that in at least one case lasted into the following year. In the discussion of invertebrates the point was made that species richness and density remain more or less the same however the question of the biomass of those invertebrates was left unanswered.

Sorry cherry picking papers and data does not necessarily make your case.

Curt

Thank you, Curt, for making those points, especially the ones about this study's failure to directly address dredging's impact on fish and the release of toxic heavy metals from streambeds, which dredging is unable to capture completely.

The following is a good short summary of the downsides of suction dredging. At the bottom of the piece are additional links describing the ultimately successful effort in Oregon to limit dredging's damage to streams with wild fish.

http://www.cascwild.org/campaigns/save-o...nking-for-gold/

Yes, the Fortymile is fishless as it freezes solid each year. This report did not study direct fish impacts but it is did examine impacts to the habitat and invertibrates fish depend on. The impacts were slight expecially considering this is a commercially dredged river. Seeing the difference between these commercial dredges and what is allowed in Washington is key

Here is some dredge trivia for comparison. I have dredged the Fortymile river in Alaska using a 8" dredge like they profiled in this report. I was able to move about 60 cubic yards per day because of the much greater capacity and the fine grained stream bottom. The dredges on the Fortymile River are each capable of moving more material in a day that I am allowed move under my HPA in 5 years. Even with this substantially larger scale, dredge impacts were still hard to find the following year

The report said there were reductions in periphyton...it also said it was localized and short lived.

The heavy metals - I have heard claims that dredges pollute the river by stirring up heavy metals. Pollution is an additive...ie...a car pollutes the air by adding exhaust to it. If a dredge discharges heavy metals into the water its because the metals were already in the water. No matter how deeply they are covered by sediment, the is still a constant circulation of water and those metals are already present. In this report it state the metals had settled out to background levels in a short distance

A modern gold dredge is able to capture heavy metals with 97% efficientcy. No other machine has been invented that can do this with such effectiveness. Below is a pic I took today. It shows about 8 pounds of lead steel copper and even a silver spoon and a couple bullets. I removed this with my dredge in one week of dredging. I have many more pounds of lead that I have already melted into ingots. Also in the pic is 4 pound of mercury that I also removed with my dredge....all from one river.
I dont need a PhD to know that if you have toxic material in the river and you remove a significant quantity, you have a lot less toxic material in the river and the river is healthier.

I will be out of town for a while but will provide more info later.
.

Fish dont spawn in a cobble patch or boulder field. They can't move a softball or larger rock to make a redd. The sediment washes down and is reclassified by the stream and provides material for new spawing areas. after the next high water you cant even tell.

Cold is not the proper word for it...gasp
.