New 49'er Newsletter

THIRD QUARTER, SEPTEMBER 2018                              VOLUME 32, NUMBER 4

Dave McCracken

 

Newsletter By Dave McCracken General Manager

 

At the invitation of California Water Quality Control, myself and several other industry leaders were urged to attend two separate meetings in Sacramento during this past month of August.

Between the two meetings, the following people representing our industry were present: Myself, representing The New 49’ers; Rich Krimm representing  New 49’er Internal Affairs (Rich has authority to make decisions on behalf of our organization during my absence); Jim Yerby representing The New 49’ers Legal Fund;  Craig Lindsay representing the Western Mining Alliance; Bill Fisher; Jim & Emily Rankin representing the Shasta Miners & Prospectors Association; Shannon Poe & Jere Clemants (Joe) both representing the American Rights Association (AMRA). I’m sorry to not give mention to a few others, because I could not make out the names on the sign-in sheets.

Each of the meetings had a representative from California Senator Stone’s office in attendance.  Please remember Senator Stone for this. His presence in these meetings is extremely valuable for keeping the process going in an honest and positive direction.

I am estimating there were at least five representatives from the California Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) at both meetings. But the two people taking the lead on this process are Renan.Jauregui & Afrooz.Farsimadan. Both can be reached in care of their names @waterboards.ca.gov.

Please note that these were informal meetings to help the Water Board better understand the way our industry works before they release a draft proposal. Once the draft is released, everyone will be invited to participate in the formal process. Nobody has been excluded.

Diana Messina, Section Chief of Surface Water Permitting, took charge of the first meeting and did a very good job of presenting the Water Board’s position. She is clearly very capable, and we can only hope that she will remain involved.

Here are some of the points that we discussed during the meetings, along with some of my personal thoughts and ideas along the way.

1) The Water Board has decided that it will adopt a Statewide National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System(NPDES) Permit to support suction dredging in the State of California. Section 402 of the federal Clean Water Act authorizes EPA and individual States which are delegated the authority by EPA, to regulate point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States.To put this in perspective, there has been substantial debate and controversy, and even some ongoing litigation in Oregon, as to whether suction dredgers discharge any pollutants since we are adding nothing to the waterways that is not already present there.

While there are different viewpoints about this, I believe it is safe to say that, as a whole, if we should be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act, most of our community believes, if at all, we should be under Section 404. Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes a program to regulate the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States.

Section 402 is under the authority of the U.S. EPA. Section 404 is under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps).  My understanding is that the law only allows an activity such as ours to be regulated under one or the other of these CWA Sections, but not both.

Under Section 404, there are exemptions that easily apply to what we do with suction dredging. As just one example, due to substantial litigation by representatives of the large-scale mining industry, the Army Corps has been forced to allow incidental fallback, within certain limits, to be excluded from regulation under Section 404. The primary definition that comes to mind when considering “incidental fallbackis the material that washes off a large-scale bucket excavation project that is being used to deepen a channel in a harbor. As I understand it, the courts decided since nothing has been added to the fallback, and it is deposited into or near the primary excavation, it should not be considered a pollutant for purposes of regulation under the CWA.

But the definitions of incidental fallback go much further than what falls off a bucket. It also describes placer mining operations which excavate material from the bottom of a waterway, run the material across a gravity recovery system for the extraction of minerals without adding any other substance, and then discharges the dredged material back to or near the excavation site. This describes exactly what we do in suction dredging, only on a much smaller scale than what the litigation was about.

For a better understanding, I suggest you look at the Army Corps’ explanation in the Federal Register right here.

You will be interested to know that in light of existing law, the Army Corps has adopted nationwide exemptions for small-scale suction dredge activities (up to 4-inch intake size, I believe).

However, upper level management officials at the California Waterboard have decided to not adopt the 404 approach. Instead, they have decided to regulate small-scale suction dredging under Section 402 – which assumes we are discharging a pollutant into the waterways.  The question remains what pollutant are we discharging?  Please stay with me and I will present the underhanded tactics that are in play.

As we have discovered through ten years of litigation in California, and ultimately losing every case; the California court system has completely turned its back on ordinary citizens seeking relief from the unreasonable actions by the legislative and executive branches of State government. At least for now, the option of seeking relief from State court is not available.

I have taken it upon my own to forward the Army Corps 404 exemptions to the Water Board staff who are actively developing a 402 permitting scheme to regulate our industry.  But my best guess is that the 404 exemptions will be set aside because the decision to pursue Section 402 has been made by others further up the chain of command.  So we will need to move ahead for the short term with the realities of Section 402.

I say “for the short term;” because even though we do not see it on television, Mr. Trump’s “make America Great” program is moving ahead with momentum to open up resource development on the federal lands. In his various speeches, he has made references to shrinking the size of protected (from development) national monuments, other federal lands which have been made off limits to sustainable development, and possibly even allow some development inside of wilderness areas. You will only see the negative side of this in the main stream fake media.

There are multiple lawsuits initiated by some States, in concert with the (many) George Soros-funded extreme liberal and environmental groups, to try and put a stop to Mr. Trump’s “make America great” agenda. These are the very same groups, many who have infiltrated State and federal agencies and entire portions of State and federal legislatures, that have stopped suction dredging (along with timber development, farming, ranching, etc.) in California and elsewhere for the past ten+ years.

Even though we have never harmed a single fish in any way. But they know that. Our challenge has never been about fish. For those who oppose us, at least at the management level, it has always been about undermining the foundations of what made America great in the first place. I encourage you to take the time to go through the list of leftist organizations either owned directly or supported financially by George Soros. You will recognize the names of many of the organizations, including the environmental groups that have all but killed reasonable and sustainable resource development on our federal lands. For that matter, even on private lands.

The bottom line is that America finds itself in our second civil war! So far, the war is not taking place with guns and bombs. But think about it: the reason to bomb a mine or a factory is to put it out of production. If the mine or factory can be legislated or regulated out of production, we have the same result – except the people who have lost their livelihoods don’t understand the reasons why. We are told it is to save the fish or birds or bugs. But it is really about undermining the productive capability of America.

I know some people are turned off by Mr. Trump’s sometimes abrasive language and behavior. My answer to this is that we are not in a popularity contest. Let’s please just get past that! We are in a very close contest to win back the American dream! All I can say is that if it were not for Mr. Trump, we would have long since lost America’s second civil war with Hilary Clinton ruling the country.

Here is my prediction: If the Trump agenda manages to move forward, the Trump Team will ultimately overcome the stranglehold which America’s domestic enemies (inside all levels of government) who are determined to burn America’s forests down (and now entire rural communities), rather than return to sustainable forest management that creates wealth and prosperity for all Americans. This management approach will include us as small-scale gold miners who recover true wealth for America, remove mercury, lead and other toxins from the country’s waterways, and create prosperity for rural communities.

Said another way: We don’t need to challenge California’s decision to manage suction dredging under Section 402 of the CWA. This very same matter is already being challenged in Oregon. That aside, Mr. Trump will eventually win the litigation against the very same legal issues which are holding us back. If he cannot do it, we will never return to the America dream that we grew up in (those of us who are old enough to remember real freedom).

While we wait, it appears that the California Water Board fully intends to adopt a Statewide water quality permit that will (perhaps) allow suction dredging under Section 402 of the CWA.

2) I apologize for the long explanation above. But I feel it is important to set some foundations so the remainder will be more understandable.

3) Having devoted multiple hours in two meetings with the Water Board staff that are in charge of developing a water quality permit to allow suction dredging in California, and listening closely to their comments, my personal impression is that this mid-level staff has been directed to develop a water quality permit scheme that will work for our industry. I have not detected any animosity towards our industry. In fact, Diana Messina, a very capable person, who is the Section Chief of the Water Board’s Surface Water Permitting Section, made the bold statement that “the Water Board is bound by law to come up with a permitting scheme that will work for our industry.” Said another way: my impression is that this staff has no dog in the fight to prevent us from getting back into the water.

4) This development is a huge change to what we have been up against for a long time!

5) In fact, I get that the Water Board is truly challenged with the problems of imposing Section 402 requirements upon us that were really developed for (very) large industry that creates actual pollution which must be disposed of somewhere.

6) I get that the Water Board staff is looking for solutions that will balance the needs of our community with the requirement to mitigate real environmental concerns.

This is where we were in 1994 after two failed public processes (corrupt attempts to end underwater gold mining in California), when existing Fish & Game management was reprimanded by republican Governor Pete Wilson, and capable staff were finally assigned to assess the real concerns about suction dredge mining and develop regulations that would eliminate or reduce potential harm to acceptable levels. Those regulations sustained our industry and allowed it to flourish for 15 years!

7) Since the 2012 Fish & Wildlife suction dredge regulations, now fully adopted into California law, have basically reduced us to suction dredging along California’s larger-sized waterways, I strongly doubt that turbidity from our tailings discharges are going to be a serious water quality issue. The reason I say this is that there are multiple formal studies which have come to this very same conclusion. This is especially true along the Klamath River where water quality is poor to begin with.

8) The primary concern, in water quality terms, is the potential discharge of certain metals which are considered hazardous within the Section 402 guidelines. The State’s (flawed) position is that heavy metals, such as mercury, are locked in place at the bottom of waterways that are covered by “armored streambeds” which are not normally disturbed or moved by normal flood events. Generally, I would agree that this is true where the armored streambeds exist. However, the larger storm events (which are now more common because of warming trends) will create enough violence in the waterways to break up hard-packed streambeds and tumble everything further downstream, including any and all mercury or other heavy metals that may exist in the waterways.

Think about it:  If large storms do not occasionally break up and disburse compacted streambeds, how is it that the bedrock channels are dug deeper into the earth over geologic time?  Said another way: How is it that armored streambeds are in place at the bottom of a waterway if they were not washed there by large flood storms?

So the Water Board and our avowed enemies have based this process upon a flawed presumption from the beginning.  Please keep on reading to gain an understanding of how large this mistake is.

It is typical progressive logic to ignore the long term and only focus on short term affects.  Long term thinking is what will make America great again! Preventing suction dredgers from removing 98% of the mercury from waterways, even if 2% is left behind, when there is no other alternative to remove the mercury, is either flawed planning by short term thinkers, or careful planning by America’s domestic enemies. No matter the reason, it amounts to extremely poor, politically motivated, management.

Please allow me to shed some light on this: The California Water Board conducted a study years ago to see how much mercury would be recovered by a standard suction dredge in an area (Auburn Creek in the Motherlode) that had been identified by suction dredgers as a mercury hotspot. It was not a controlled study, in that they did not analyze the raw material in front of the dredge to determine how much mercury was present in the streambed or on the bedrock, and what portion was floured. “Flowered mercury” started in liquid form, but has been subjected to so much violence that it has been broken down into millions of particles so small that you cannot see them with the naked eye unless there is an abundance of them present.

I am somewhat of an expert on liquid mercury. I know from extensive personal experience that you cannot break down liquid mercury into floured mercury simply by passing it through a normal suction dredge. No way!

You can break mercury down through hours and hours of aggressive tumbling in a container filled with a set of dredge concentrates and metal balls or heavy rods that clash together with severe violence.

Many years ago, over the concerns about harming fish by sucking them through a suction dredge, a group of dredgers in Washington State demonstrated to interested lawmakers that sucking uncooked hotdogs through a suction dredge did not cause any damage to the hotdogs. So the notion that a suction dredge causes enough violence to flour mercury is absurd on its face!

I also know from extensive experience that a standard suction dredge will recover most liquid mercury, but not floured mercury that is moving with normal streambed material. The individual particles of floured mercury are so small that they cannot separate themselves from the turbulent flow that is moving larger-sized rocks being pushed by water through a standard sluice box. While the dredge may capture some, most miniscule particles of mercury will just wash through the sluice box with the flow of water and lighter gravel material.

Here is the big question: Is a suction dredge the “point source” of minuscule particles of mercury that already exist in the waterway?  Of course not! Those particles originated from some other source long in the past.

In any event, the Water Board study determined that 98% of the mercury was recovered by the dredge. They found 2 % of overall mercury in floured form within the dredge tailings.

Without looking at the raw streambed material being processed, the Water Board determined that the dredge caused the flouring of the 2% discovered in the tailings. Wrong!!  This determination would not be accepted by any scientific enquiry that is looking for the truth. The important unanswered question is whether or not the floured mercury pre-existed in the streambed material that was run through the dredge?  Of course it was!

Here is the important point: My assumption is the reason the Water Board refuses to address this flaw in their study is that they want to make the case that since the dredge is the cause of the floured mercury, the dredge can be considered a Point Source which justifies managing our industry under Section 402 of the CWA.  Upper level nonscientific decisions such as this do not originate by officials who want to help make America great. They originate from America’s domestic enemies.

On that note, the Water Board did return to the very same excavation site the following season and found that the bedrock contained ample amounts of flowered mercury. Where did that come from? The only conclusion to this is that mercury is migrating down some of California’s waterways with every storm event. But this new data did nothing to change their determination that the suction dredge was the point source. You know; only the truth is going to set our industry and America free again!

9) During the first meeting with Water Board staff, we posed the question about whether it is more productive for us to recover 98% of the mercury from California’s waterways, or to leave it all in place to migrate downstream over decades or centuries to contaminate future food supplies. While they were clearly sympathetic to our position, the Water Board staff made it clear that they are bound by existing law which does not allow any hazardous discharges of mercury from our suction dredge recovery systems.But are these discharges? Or are they just pass through of material that already exists in the waterway?

Understandably, this mid-level management group does not have the authority to change or bypass existing California law. So they are looking for solutions that will allow us back into the water without discharging hazardous metals.

10) The good news is that this dredge study and others were conducted in already-established mercury hotspots located by suction dredgers where puddles of mercury were visible on the bedrock. I believe such places are far and few between. For example, I have never seen a puddle of mercury in the Klamath River, and I have devoted many years of dredging there in high-grade gold deposits which would also accumulate mercury if it were present.

11) Other than a few defined areas, the State does not know of any other mercury hotspots along the rivers of California. So they are flying blind. They don’t know if and where any other mercury hot spots are, other than the several that have already been discovered by suction dredgers.

12) I encourage you to read the Water Board’s page which provides an explanation concerning the ongoing project to adopt an NPDES permit under the authority of Section 402 of the CWA. Project staff conducted five public workshops during early 2017. It would be safe to say that our two meetings last month were an extension of their information gathering process.

13) The dilemma Water Board staff is faced with is in not knowing if California’s waterways are completely inundated with mercury, or if mercury hot spots are rare. Years ago, some rivers were monitored for mercury in the water columns both during regular flow periods and during high water events when mercury levels always increased. There was also some monitoring of certain types of critters in the waterways which accumulate mercury when present. I don’t know what happened to those programs. But it would seem as though they would provide the best available information.

14) All of this aside, the Water Board staff has made it clear that they are moving forward with an NPDES permit. End of story. So the question remains how we can fit our suction dredge industry into the process so that we can get suction dredgers back in the water under the 2012 suction dredge regulations which have already been adopted into California law by the Department of Fish & Wildlife (DFW).

15) Just a side note on this: Through ten years of expensive litigation in the State of California, each of our multiple attempts to overcome the 2012 DFW suction dredge regulations failed within the California courts. There is a federal preemption case in the federal 9th Circuit Court that challenges State authority to prohibit mining on the public lands. This case will certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. A positive outcome there might turn things around for us in California and all the other gold-bearing States. Some of the ongoing challenges to the Trump Administration also have the potential to free us from severely punishing State regulation.

16) Back to the NPDES permit: The main problem to small-scale miners is the cost involved. As I understand it, the permit application begins with a nonrefundable $2,000 application fee. Then there will be required monitoring costs. I believe Water Board staff said they have identified 5-to-7 metals they are concerned about. The primary metal is mercury. To maintain integrity in the process, the monitoring will need to be conducted by licensed technicians – who will forward the water samples to a California-certified lab. Samples of the water will be required upstream of the excavation, at the discharge of the dredge, and at some distance below the discharge. This process will be expensive. The average figure of an additional $4,000 was voiced multiple times by Water Board staff.

17) During the discussions, it was generally agreed that once a section of river has been monitored to satisfy the conclusion that harmful discharges of mercury and other dangerous metals were not present, the monitoring activity could be ended in that portion of waterway. I gather that the initial $2000 permit application fee is for a permit that is good for five years.

18) We do not even know yet how much an annual suction dredge permit will cost from DFW. The amount of $200 has been floated around.

19) Remember; the 2012 suction dredge regulations open most of the larger waterways for only three months. It used to be that we could dredge year-round on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers.

20) Then there is this ongoing discussion about recreational miners compared to commercial miners. We don’t need to make that argument here. But we do need to discuss how much time a person has available to go dredging. A person with a week or two is not going to spend thousands of dollars to go dredging! Even a person with three months to invest has no guarantee that he will recover enough gold over costs to even break even on a permit scheme that will cost thousands of dollars.

21) As I said earlier, with an occasional exception, I don’t believe the Section 402 permit scheme was created for individuals who just want to spend a few weeks enjoying the great outdoors, and perhaps exposing their children to the authentic golden wealth at the bottom of California’s waterways. Section 402 was created to deal with industrial industries which produce waste on a large scale.

22) To my surprise, and that of others in the meetings, the Water Board staff was also taking these prohibitive costs to individual suction dredgers into consideration.

23) As I understand it, their tentative solution is to permit mining associations which provide access to multiple mining properties to all of their members. “Mining association” is somewhat of a loose term that could apply to many different situations. As a large example, The New 49’ers provides perhaps 50 miles of waterway that would be allowed dredging under the 2012 regulations to around 1,500 active members. If our association arranges for the Section 402 water permit to cover all of our properties on behalf of all our active members, and arranges an adequate monitoring program, our active members would just need to obtain the suction dredge permit from DFW. This would provide a way for individuals to participate.

24) It was suggested that an independent property owner could potentially work with our association to include his property(ies) under our water quality permit, become an active member and obtain the dredging permit, even if his personal properties were not made available to others within our association.

25) Said another way, there is no limit on the ways groups of suction dredgers can come together to share the costs of the water quality permit so each can qualify for a suction dredging permit.

26) This association permit plan was devised by the Water Board staff as an idea to make the permit available to individuals who otherwise could not justify spending the money to go suction dredging for shorter periods.

27) To give you a better idea of the way the Water Board staff was trending before our first meeting, here is a link to the “Topics of Discussion” document they sent to us before the meeting. As you can see, the discussion was all about the idea of suction dredgers coming together in groups (associations) to spread the water quality permit costs out to become more affordable.

28) We were sent the same discussion document in advance of the second meeting.

29) New 49’ers is organized already to, not only obtain the permit for all of the properties we make available to our members, but also to include other, smaller associations and individual claim owners who have properties within the umbrella of our existing area of responsibility (most of Siskiyou County; most of the Klamath National Forest in northern California).

30) Our primary question has to do with how much, and how often, monitoring will be required over the five-year term of the water quality permit.  If allowed some flexibility, step by step, I believe we could free whole reaches of waterways from the concerns over harmful heavy metal contamination; and perhaps even identify hot spots (if they exist at all) which would thereafter be made off limits to suction dredging.

31) Other associations at the meetings expressed some level of encouragement, though monitoring costs, how often and where, remain a concern.

32) According to Water Quality staff, they are hoping to release a draft permit for public comment sometime in February 2019.  You can place yourself on the list to be informed at this link..

33) We should allow for twists and turns as the public process moves forward; but the present schedule is to have the Statewide NPDES permit finalized in April of 2019.

34) As long as the monitoring plan is something we believe we can accomplish and afford, we will immediately submit an application on behalf of all our active members for all of the properties we make available that are legal for suction dredging under the 2012 DFW regulations.

35) Therefore, I would predict that it is more than a 50/50 chance that our members will be dredging again during the upcoming 2019 season. We have not seen those kind of odds since we were shut down in 2009!

36) While I may be wrong, I see this as a temporary reprieve from the existing situation of no suction dredging at all – and the terribly flawed definition California adopted of a “suction dredge” as being any mechanical device within 300 feet of an active waterway that is being used to help facilitate excavation or processing material for the purposes of mineral recovery. Just to be clear, this is what suction dredging is!

37) I have my fingers crossed that ongoing litigation (which is out of our hands) at the federal level will bring this sort of nonsense to an end.

A Big Thank you to Those Members who have Sent in Your Annual Dues!

We bill all Full Members $50 for annual dues in August.  September through the end of the year is when we must shoulder the load of substantial property tax and filing fees to the County and Bureau of Land Management. These are legal requirements which allow us to continue making a very substantial number of federal mining claims (60+ miles of gold-rich river and creek properties) available to our members.

In real terms, the true value of the gold along these extensive properties is probably more substantial than the net assets of any financial institution on the planet. We should be calling our properties the “Klamath First National Bank.” Ours is the only bank in the world where you can go out and make a draw anytime you wish. There are no interest or bank fees to pay.  And you never have to pay the gold back!

This is as close as it comes to an opportunity to maintain some degree of personal freedom during difficult or troubling times.  As far as I know, we are the only organization in the world that makes a very large bank of pure wealth freely available to our members on many, many properties that are in reasonable close proximity.

Having said that, most of us remain disappointed that the State has been preventing us from using motors to gain access to the more valuable deposits of gold which are largely out of reach to non-motorized programs. Please believe me when I say we are exhausting every effort to reverse this situation. As you can see from above, the situation will not last forever.

As it is, things being the way that they are; even if every Full Member pays the $50 annual dues, and every Associate Member pays an annual renewal fee, I personally support cost overruns with other sources of monthly income which I earned before becoming a gold miner, along with savings put away during better times.

Costs associated with maintaining our extensive properties, our material infrastructure, and to hold onto our very experienced and loyal staff, exceed the amount of income we bring in. I don’t expect this reality to change until either we get motors and underwater mining back, or until the dollar value of gold goes up so high that non-motorized mining will produce a living wage.

There remains hope that America will wake up and realize we need to produce value and wealth in excess of what we consume. Mr. Trump and his team appear to be leading the charge on this, though he is not getting as much support from congress and the mainstream press that he deserves. Like him or not, our existing president is leading the freedom and prosperity side of the existing civil war over the future of America. If Mr. Trump cannot succeed, there is nobody else to take his place with any chance of success. The whole world hangs in this balance. It remains too early to predict the outcome.

One of the developments that gives me hope is the ongoing efforts by the Trump Team and other conservatives to completely overhaul the Endangered Species Act.  (ESA) There is a strong push right now to develop America’s natural resources in a responsible way, rather than to continue making them off limits. This in itself is a reason to help republicans maintain control of the house and senate during the midterm elections.

It is the existing ESA that succeeded in killing the once-profitable logging industry in America that produced thousands upon thousands of good-paying jobs. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how much timber is harvested off the federal lands these days compared to how much is burned to the ground in wild fires due to really stupid policies which have been adopted by State and federal authorities.

Our suction dredging industry in the Western U.S. has been shut down over concerns for the endangered or threatened Coho salmon.  This, even though there is zero evidence that suction dredging ever harmed a single fish of any kind. In fact, the most recent study performed on the cumulative impact of all suction dredging determined that the effects were so small that they could not be measured.

But the deep State is not interested in real science that does not support their narrative. Therefore, productive activity is closed down by the States while they continue to sell millions of fish-kill licenses to anyone who wants to go fishing, and while our valuable forests, and now some communities, are burning to the ground.

These mid-level managers in the California Water Board are a breath of fresh air as they attempt to establish a program that will allow us to get productive again.

There are other signs that the political winds are finally trending more in our direction. My sources are telling me that the State of California has informed the Klamath National Forest (KNF) (where all our gold properties are located) that they should prepare for suction dredging to start up again during the 2019 summer season. KNF has taken this seriously enough to post an experienced Minerals Officer in the Fort Jones District that manages both the Salmon and Scott River watersheds. The Salmon River is ground zero  where all the years of litigation started so many years ago..

Fake news and left-leaning political activism aside, in the end, it will only be integrity and pursuit of the truth that will lead us towards enlightenment and prosperity. There seems to be some meaningful progress at the moment.

There is more hope now than there was 2 years ago!

I am eternally grateful to those of you who stick it out alongside me and our loyal staff. 

Our Message Forum Finally Went Down!

This has been coming for quite some time. We have not been able to reach the person who controlled the earlier platform upon which our Internet message forum has been located for a very long time.

Despite our efforts, we were also not able to save all our history. The forum was inaccessible to some members at first. Then more people could not get up there. Finally, the whole structure collapsed.

Therefore, longtime member and supporter, Jim Foley, got to work and created a whole new forum that is set up much like the original one, except the history of all our threads, posts and conversations are not there, anymore.

So it’s time to begin some new conversations!

You can find the new forum at the same link where the earlier one was by clicking here: 49’er Message Forum

I’ll make my first appearance by posting a link to this newsletter. Then another to the ongoing Legal Fund-raiser.

The New 49’ers Legal Fund-raiser!

 Gold and Silver Eagles

American Gold & Silver Eagles!

There will be 25 prizes in all:

Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles

This drawing will take place in Happy Camp, California at our office at the close of business on 25 October 2018.

Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online by clicking Here.

Purchase Tickets for the next legal Fund-raiser Drawing

$10.00 each – Enter the number of tickets you wish to purchase into the quantity field then click “Update” before checking out. Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets, etc). There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win. 

Your contribution to The New 49’er Legal Fund is tax-deductible.

2018-19 Winter Office Hours

Unless there is some kind of emergency like a wild fire, our mining properties are always open to New 49’er members 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

To conserve financial resources during the winter months when there is so little walk-in traffic, we have reduced walk in office hours to 9 am through 4 pm, Monday, Tuesday and Friday. These new office hours will begin on 1 October.

There is a phone message service if you call at a time when the phone is not being answered.

Reminder that we have an emergency Internal Affairs telephone connection that works all of the time by calling Rich Krimm at (510) 681 8066. Please do not use this number in an attempt to discuss routine matters! It is for emergencies only. 

Sign up for the Free Internet Version of this Newsletter

We strongly encourage you to sign up for the free on line version of this newsletter. This is because you can immediately click directly to many of the subjects which we discuss; because the on line version is in full color; because we link you directly to locations through GPS and Google Earth technology; and because you can watch the free video segments which we incorporate into our stories.  Actually, the video segments show the adventures better than we can write them!

Signing up also places you on our Political Action Team.  Things happen so fast these days; it takes too long to organize political action through the U.S. mail.  As an example, by contacting our supporters this way, in a matter of hours, we recently generated a large bundle of letters to the California Supreme Court. All of these future battles will be organized over the Internet since it is so much faster.  Please join us in the battle to maintain our remaining freedoms!

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New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association
27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012
www.goldgold.com

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