Yet another Conflict between Miner and a River!

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Homefire:
As the price of gold mounts, some weekend prospectors have turned to machines called suction dredges. The devices work like underwater vacuum cleaners, sucking gravel and dirt into sluice boxes that catch any gold and dump other material back into the river. That's a problem for anything living on the bottom, including mussels, fish eggs and aquatic insects, which can be killed by the machines or smothered in stirred-up sediment. California placed a moratorium on the practice in 2009 because of its damage to spawning salmon.

North Carolina requires no permits for recreational prospecting. But increased pressure from enthusiasts has raised concern on the Uwharrie River, which flows through the gold-rich heart of the Piedmont about 50 miles east of Charlotte.

"There's always a couple of people down there on the weekends, suction dredging," said Jason Walser, executive director of LandTrust for Central North Carolina, a Salisbury conservation group that owns 1,300 acres along the Uwharrie. "What we have seen is a steady increase both in the number of people and in the equipment investment and the time they're spending out there."

Last spring, LandTrust posted its property to keep out prospectors, igniting a firestorm of protest, Walser said. The 51,000-acre Uwharrie National Forest banned suction dredging about five years ago.

"If we left it unchecked it would be a big deal, it would cause some serious resource damage," said Uwharrie district ranger Deborah Walker.

The forest holds about a dozen old mining sites, and more are on private land nearby. In addition to suction dredging, forest rules prohibit prospecting with metal detectors to prevent trampling of rare plants or historic sites.

As prospecting pressure rose with gold prices, forest managers began working on policy changes to further limit its intensity, such as by limiting the size of sluice boxes.

Most amateur prospectors are driven more by the thrill of the hunt than by rising prices, said 15-year veteran Glenn Coleman, president of the Matthews chapter of the Gold Prospectors Association of America. "I've got every speck I've ever found," Coleman said. But some in the 200-member chapter see prospecting as supplemental income, he said, and suction dredges are efficient tools.

"You can pull a whole lot more with a suction dredge than you can with a shovel," Coleman said. "All we're doing is taking the gold out and putting (other material) back in the creek. It doesn't hurt the rivers and creeks. All you're disturbing is the gold."

A long, storied history

Gold has been disturbed in the Carolina Slate Belt, a geologic formation that cuts diagonally across the central Carolinas, for more than two centuries.

The nation's first gold rush began with a 12-year-old Cabarrus County lad stumbling across a 17-pound gold nugget in 1799. North Carolina became the nation's top gold producer for much of the early 1800s, and Mecklenburg County had more mines than any other county. A federal mint in Charlotte coined Southern gold until the start of the Civil War.

North Carolina now has no commercial gold mines, but the price spike - peaking this year at its highest level in decades - has exploration companies interested again. At least three firms say they are exploring historic mining sites in the Slate Belt. They can drill without permits if they disturb less than one acre.

"There is definitely large-scale drilling in North Carolina," said Kenneth Taylor, chief of the N.C. Geological Survey.

Southeast of Charlotte, in Lancaster County, S.C., a Canadian company plans to dig the biggest gold mine east of the Mississippi. The Environmental Protection Agency opposes the plan to enlarge the Haile mine, which dates to the early 1800s, because wetlands and streams would be destroyed.

An unregulated practice

It's hard to know how many recreational prospectors are scratching at N.C. gold because they aren't generally regulated. Mining is banned only in streams of unusually high ecological value, such as trout waters, and in places where endangered or threatened species are found.

The U.S. Forest Service doesn't allow sluice boxes in its western North Carolina streams because they could harm rare mountain plants and animals. Gold prospecting is prohibited in three federally-designated "wild and scenic" streams, the Horsepasture, Chattooga and Wilson Creek.

On the Uwharrie, suction dredging "if it's done properly, doesn't really hurt anything," said Bobby Crawford, state director of the prospectors association. Crawford, who's also president of the Salisbury chapter, dredges from private land along the Uwharrie.

"Where it causes problems is when you get people who don't know the laws and they start going into a bank," he said, releasing sediment into the water. Crawford said fish actually cluster near dredging because it stirs up food for them.

LandTrust is especially sensitive to prospecting because the Uwharrie basin harbors rare, if not endangered, mussels. Much of the money it used in 2006 to buy the 1,300-acre tract where prospectors congregate came from a state fund that restores ecologically important streams to offset the impacts of road construction.

As gold prices soared, Walser said, calls from prospectors asking to use the site increased. State environmental agencies who advise the conservation group on managing the site warned of potential damage from prospectors.

Those environmental agencies say they haven't yet documented harm to rare species - but they're wary of damage from increased prospecting.

John Fridell, a mussel biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Asheville, said suction dredging kills aquatic insects, fish eggs and mussels sucked into the machines, and can disturb spawning areas. Dredgers also change the dynamics of a stream, altering flow patterns and releasing sediment that can smother animals like mussels that can't swim away.

"It certainly has an effect," Fridell said, "and the more intense it is the more severe the effects."


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Gramps43:
The first thing I have to say is "BULL CRAP" this subject has been hashed out here in the west for decades and the Salmon are still running up the rivers in great amounts.  The biggest problem we have with the Anadromous fishery is the foreign trawlers taking unrestricted amounts of all fishes not just the Salmon & Steelhead.  Here in Oregon we have a specified time period for suction dredging in between the hatch of the summer run and the spawn of the fall run which protects the fish.  BTW in all the videos of dredging I have seen not even one small fish has been sucked up, the dredge nozzle is in the gravel and mud and the small fish are keeping their distance and feeding on morsels kicked up by the dredger.

Now as to mussels, I don't know how many of you have seen the video out a hit piece done by a TV station in CA but they had a very young fella who purported himself as a Kurak Tribe biologist showing the TV twinkies dead mussels and saying that the dredgers had done it.  I don't know where he got his diploma but this was straight from stupid, the mussels were several feet from the waters edge attached to a rock in a dry part of the river bed.  It was obvious the water level had fallen as it was summer and rivers, being the sneaky-snakey things that they are, do that in the summer.

Most mussels that I have seen attach themselves to large rocks along the edge of the river and should be out of the area of interest of a dredger.  Now if a dredger of questionable mental acuity is simply smashing mussels just for the fun out it then he should by all means be removed from the river.  But to tag all dredgers as "mussel murderers" is a demented dream of a mentally immature mind.

Yes the dredge does return rocks, silt and little water creatures in various stages of dead and alive.  The rocks fall off the end of the dredge and pile up but the dredge tender, the person topside, oh did I mention nobody with half a brain goes dredging alone it's not safe, with either a rake or shovel redistributes the area.  Now here in the PNW those small rocks that are now cleaned and loosely laying on the river bottom are easily moved about by the Salmon and Steelhead to make their redds (nets), the eggs after fertilization drop down between those loose rocks where they are protected from predators.  Even after they hatch the fry have lots of nooks and crannies to hide in until they've put on some size.  Oh that plume that extends out from the dredge yes it does contain silt which will settle out some yards down river but if you compare it to the silt in a rain swollen river it's piddlie.  As to the remains of the river bugs and such well the local fish pop. is partying down.

As for the scientific community that are against dredging they have an agenda that is driven in a lot of cases by the organizations they belong to and if thoroughly questioned you find they really don't have empirical data backing up their claims.  The scientists on the other side do have quite a bit of data that backs the dredgers claims of no harm no foul.  One of these scientific types is Joseph C. Greene a retired USEPA biologist, that’s right folks he worked for the very people who are trying to shut us down (all types of prospecting) so he knows that what the other side is spouting is pure "BULL CRAP."

I suggest you go the prospectorsunite/shutterfly.com site, join, it's free and then check in their files section, you will find plenty of ammo to shot down the enviros.

Good hunting to all whether it be MD, panning, sluicing or dredging.

Gramps


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haroldnjoni:
You are 100% right gramps :) Dredging does more good then harm for the enviorment!

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Homefire:
Yep, I know that.

You know that.

We know that but like the word Mercury being used in Lu of the word DEATH,  Mining is in line just plain EVAL!

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beachcomberdan:
One of the other things that does not get mentioned enough is mercury. This stuff is all over here in the West, both naturally occurring and that introduced by the old timers who did not know any better. The idiots running California banned suction dredging while Oregon and Washington still allow it. All of the fish here in California are loaded with mercury contamination because it is not being removed from the environment by mechanical means. Instead, it is being removed by animals in the ecosystem which we then consume. There are programs in Oregon and Washington that allow dredgers to drop off the mercury they collect from their sluice boxes and the amounts they collect are staggering. Consequently, the fish in those states have little to no detectable mercury in their systems. Wonder why...

Suction dredging, when done in a controlled manner by limiting seasons and requiring permits, is a great thing for the environment. It removes mercury, improves fish habitat, makes the fish safe for consumption, and adds much needed revenue for both the states and prospecting businesses. And in this terrible economy, everybody needs all the help they can get.

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Homefire:
LOL!   Don't be confusing folks Emotions with Facts and Science!   LOL

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Danny:
This was some interesting reading.  I agree that dredging does good for the fish that live in the waters.  It not only loosens the rocks, but the silt that is put back in the water also provides new food sources to start growing again.

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