6 December 2009

The State of California recently passed a law which has placed a statewide moratorium on suction dredging in California until the Department of Fish & Game (DFG) completes an updated Environmental Impact Report (EIR). This EIR process has already begun. Click here for more information.

The Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on suction dredging in California is being completed through a CEQA Process (California Environmental Quality Act); which, based upon best available science, requires the authorities to identify any important concerns (measured against some “baseline”).  Then, those concerns must be addressed through implementation of regulations which are least-restrictive upon people and economic activity. This is not new to us, since we actively participated in the earlier EIR which was completed during 1994.

DFG began the public process on 26 October by circulating a 107-page Notice of Preparation (NOP).  The NOP is mostly made up of an “Initial Study Suction Dredging Program,” which is also being referred to as the “Initial Scoping Document.” This formal review has basically identified every known potential negative impact which could be associated with suction dredging. 

The Scoping Document has been sent around to all or most government agencies, environmental groups, mining interests and other known “stakeholders” who may have some interest in the progress and outcome of the EIR.   Interested parties were provided an opportunity to comment on the Initial Scoping Document.  The deadline for written comments passed on 3 December.  This was the initial opportunity for us to make comments voicing our concerns about how the process is moving forward or any initial conclusions DFG has made that we believe are incorrect within the Scoping Document.

The New 49’ers submitted written comments expressing several areas of concern.  We have created a  special page on our web site so you can view our comments, and so you can follow along and participate in this important process as it moves forward.

One of our most important initial concerns is that within the Scoping Document, DFG says that they intend to use the existing moratorium (on suction dredging) to create a baseline of “no dredging activity” in order to gauge the importance of any potential impacts.  

Everything leading up to this process (years of legal wrangling) resulted in several court decisions and Settlement Agreements whereby DFG pledged to perform the EIR specifically for the purpose of determining if existing suction dredging regulations have been providing adequate protection for fish. The moratorium has stopped existing dredging activity only until existing regulations are re-evaluated.  More than 2,500 suction dredge permits were issued by California during our 2009 season.  But DFG has decided to create a baseline in the EIR to evaluate all of the potential impacts against zero activity, choosing to completely ignore the existence of our $60million annual business!  We have had a viable suction dredge industry in California for the past 30 years.  Now DFG is going to try and evaluate future impacts against a baseline of zero?

Do you guys get the idea that the State of California is deliberately trying to kill off its own private business, or is it just me?

We felt this issue was so important, and because there are serious legal implications, we paid our attorneys to author comments on our behalf concerning this particular issue. 

Another major problem in the Scoping Document was in the way DFG has projected volumes of streambed which are processed by suction dredgers. Basically, they took the volume capacities advertised by the dredge manufacturers and multiplied those by an average number of hours per day, multiplied by so many days per week, multiplied by the number of permits they sold in 2008.  You guys get the idea?  DFG thinks we just go down and suck up sediments which mostly just pass through a suction nozzle!  They have no idea that we are taking apart compacted streambeds in which 85% of the material must be moved out of the excavation by hand (or by power winch in the case of large rocks) because it is too large to pass through the nozzle.

This is proof-positive that the people who are spending $1.5 million performing this Environmental Impact Report on suction dredging have no direct experience of their own with the activity!  No wonder California is bankrupt!

Since projected volume capacities are what DFG will use to place a negative value upon the potential impacts from suction dredges, and their estimates are many magnitudes greater than what really happens in dredging, I personally devoted some substantial work into comments on this subject.

We also made comments on other very important issues.  For example, the Scoping Document seems to indicate that DFG is going to completely ignore all of the biological discussions and conclusions which evolved from the EIR which we worked so hard to complete in 1994. So, contrary to their promises in Court, rather than take a hard look at the well-established, earlier biological conclusions to see if they are providing adequate protection for fish, it appears that DFG now intends to scrap all the earlier work and begin the entire biological discussion over again from scratch. Here are our initial comments about that.

On top of that, despite repeated formal Declarations to the courts and California legislature that they have new data which suggests harm to fish, we cannot find anything new in the Scoping Document.  It looks to us like they just want to rework all the same old arguments, once again.

DFG concerns over mercury are the exception to my statement in the paragraph above.  This all stems from a study which the State performed several years ago where they proved that a standard suction dredge recovered 98% of the mercury which they sucked up out of an established mercury hot spot (there were visible pools of mercury on the bedrock).  Of course, little or no credit is given to the 98% clean-up rate.  All of the attention is on the 2% loss of mercury in the tailings.  This is not mercury the dredgers put into the stream, have you; the mercury was already in the stream. The State’s argument is that because the dredge sucked it up in the first place, it is a water quality violation to discard any mercury back into the waterway.  Leave it to the State to decide that it is better to not remove 98% of the mercury which dredgers rarely encounter! 

Environmentalists argue that because a suction dredge only recovered 98% of the mercury out of an established waste site, all suction dredging should be stopped across the entire state!  We submitted comments on this from myself and also from some other specialists in this field.

We also felt it important to comment on the continuous misuse of the term “recreational” in relation to mineral exploration and mining activity.  It is common for State officials to confuse small-scale gold exploration activities as just another recreation, no different than any other.  Federal law provides every American the right to search for minerals on any level which you choose to – and to claim valuable deposits which you find on the public lands.  Whether or not you are enjoying the activity has nothing to do with it.  Even a total anti-mining activist has the right to claim a valuable deposit if he stumbles upon one. But he or she would argue that you don’t have the right simply because you are enjoying the activity?  Give me a break!

I encourage you to take the time to read our comments if you can find the time. 

We have done our best to set the record right. Now we will wait and see how seriously DFG will entertain our comments.  The more seriously they treat them now, the less of a battle we will have later if they decide to just skip over them as unimportant. 

The purpose of the CEQA process is to get at the truth.  But we have seen time and time again (nearly every time) where truth and justice has not been part of the State process, so we will have to remain vigilant.

A draft EIR is the next step in the process.  We can expect to see that during this next summer or fall (2010).  That will be followed by another opportunity for public input. A final EIR is not expected until spring 2011 at the earliest.

Completing the Administrative process is the one thing that surely is going to get dredgers back in the California waterways.  We are right on top of this.