Mother Nature Shows Why Anti-Dredging Laws Are Ridiculous

[DizzyDigger]

And it only took a few days of good rain to do it...

This graph is from today (11-28-2014) and was measured at 19:15 PST.
The current flow in the Skagit River is 91,300 Cubic Feet per Second.



Currently 4ft. over flood stage, we're all hoping the river has crested.

This river runs behind my home, and it typically flows at about
12,000-18,000 CFS..except when the heavy rains come in the
Spring and Fall. With all that water flowing off the mountains the
river will generally swell to 50k-60k CFS, and when that happens all the
mud and silt gets washed into the river, too. Water looks like fast-flowing
chocolate milk, but it's also full of debris.

Over 80k CFS and the river starts carrying down trees and
massive logs, huge stumps and plenty more mud.

You can smell the silt in the air. The logs and whole trees grinding
downriver just get larger, and heavier, and like icebergs only a part
shows above water...the rest is dragging along the river bottom,
grinding up everything in it's path. The years salmon runs are just
finishing, and the river is loaded with salmon and steelhead eggs.
Water logged stumps with 120' trees attached to them are oblivious
to the salmon redds...they just grind them up along with the rest of
the bottom material. If you are near the river you can literally feel
the ground shudder as ten tons and 80' of soggy log slam into
boulders the size of a D10 Cat. Tens of thousands of yards of
gravel get redistributed as channels are dug out in one spot
and bars are created in new locations somewhere downriver.

The structure of the entire river is being "renovated" by Ma Nature;
she's not real timid about it. At the same time the ridiculous arguments
of the anti-dredging crowd are being ripped to shreds. The outflow of
a thousand 6" dredges running all year wouldn't make a pimple on the
arse of what Mother Nature did with some rain and melted snow in just
a couple of days.

Ma Nature could care less about "Sue and Settle", or responding to
the inane, endless attempts from the "Church of Save the Earth",
whose dogma is based on their version of a perfect dream world that
simply does not exist, nor will it ever.

p.s. It is currently about 35F, and clear skies. If it stays
cold and clear for a few days, the river will have returned
to it's beautiful, deep clear green normal self.

 

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[Bejay]

There is some merit to the argument concerning dredging. The reason for mentioning it is to make a point that mother nature and species have a "workable" time frame that enables species to exist. It also brings forth the "in stream" work periods issue.

For instance salmon spawning/eggs/fry/smolt issues correspond to natures hydraulic tendencies. In other words siltation/sedimentation on spawning beds is limited because of the time/year/season the fish spawn. So an argument can justifiably be made that extensive dredging at the wrong time of the year can/could harm spawning fish and such issues.

I'll also point out that NO such in water work times ever existed back in the old days of placer mining when extensive mining completely ruined habitat....and now the rivers/streams are loaded with fish. So nature even heals itself.

My point is this: Some consideration of such issues warrant the attention of the placer miner. BUT as usual the "tail wags the dog" and lies abound about dredging.

Bejay

 

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[DizzyDigger]

Bejay, I would agree about restricting dredging in rivers/streams/creeks
known to be active spawning grounds for any species during their spawning
time. The runs are generally pretty predictable, and everyone desires to
see the fish flourish.

Interesting though how the major flood seasons are smack-dab
in the middle of spawning season for so many species of fish. The
salmon generally don't even enter the river system until there is a
high flow, and this year, just as in so many other years, we got
very heavy rain in the Fall. Generation upon generation of salmon
redds have survived these annual events, and we'd still have the
massive runs of old were it not for overfishing from the world's
commercial fishermen and the in-river tribal gill-netters.

As is typical, the gov't is addressing everything but the problem.

 

[enamel7]

I don't get what point Bejay is making. Dredging seasons were already set up to not interfere with spawning season, so that statement is moot. Modern day dredging has NEVER caused issues with the spawning season. Another area the environut's arguments make no sense.

 

[Bejay]

I'll explain my point. The issue of flood turbidity and dredge turbidity is all about timing. Turbidity and hydraulic activity within natural drainage situations are correlated to a natural timing of fish activity; such as spawning. This has evolved over long periods of geologic time. So one would say it is "the natural occurrence". The introduction of extensive dredging at the wrong time of year can/will adversely effect spawning.

So when discussions come forth saying that dredging and natural flooding are exactly the same there can be an argument made that they are not. It has been my experience that it is best to acknowledge the possibility of adverse conditions, and to point out that proper management of dredging can exclude that argument from becoming valid.

The ability of fish to overcome short bursts of adversity is quite obvious to most in the scientific community. But those who want to shut down dredging exploit the negative and fail to acknowledge that in water dredge activity can be effectively managed by the USFWS. (Federal Jurisdiction of Federal managed public waterways explicitly GRANTED to the miner).

So my point is simple: Acknowledge the potential risk and identify the correct method of neutralizing any such risk. Which is what was currently taking place until the "greenies" began to exploit any and all potential risks!....and the "greenies" carry that further with "out and out lies". Truth eventually prevails over lies!

Bejay

 

[enamel7]

Got it! Now it makes sense. Thank you for the explanation.

 

[DizzyDigger]

We had quite a bit of rain on Monday night, and yesterday
the river was headed right back up. The weather has been
odd, to say the least, as a week ago it was in the low 20's
at night, and last night it was a very balmy 55F.



River peaked out at 26' (2' under flood stage) and the flow
was up to 50,000 CFS. That's enough to stir things up pretty
good, and while the water color was a very murky green, by
daylight it's sure to be a chocolate color with 0 visibility.

That's also enough flow to move debris off the beaches, so
I grabbed my camera and took a few shots off the back deck.
Very grey sky conditions made it tough to get a fast enough
exposure, but I managed to snap a few at a high ISO setting.

Here's a 30' log looking for something to bash into:



A 20' log that seems to have bashed into something
and split:



This next one is of a couple of logs over 100', and
that big root ball in the upper right is the back end
of the back log. Most of that root ball is underwater,
and at that spot had to be grinding the bottom to hell
and gone. They're like big battle cruisers, trashing
anything in their path.






Bejay, I'm no attorney, and tend to look at things in the
simplest of terms. People today want to analyze the sheite
out of everything right down to the gnats fuzzy arse. In
my mind, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the
turbidity and bottom restructuring from a natural high water
or flood condition is 10's of thousands of times the small amount
of highly localized turbidity your average sized dredge creates.

Schedule the dredging seasons around the spawning runs, and
leave the rivers/creeks open for dredging the rest of the year.

Still, the entire issue should have been a non-starter. Anyone with
a lick of common sense and experience around rivers should know
better.

Sadly, Our opponents in this issue could really care less how
they get control, but they will continue relentlessly until they do.
They are products of a society that has taught and empowered them
to save Mother Earth at all costs, and to them that means locking
humanity out of as much land as possible. To them, the ends justifies
the means.

"Common Sense" does not even enter the equation.

 

[57chevy]

I just don't get it.

How can any sane, logical person say that using a dredge
causes all kinds of heinous damage to a river or stream when
Ma Nature's annual "clean-up" tops it by 10,000 fold.

WHY hasn't some attorney gone in, showed the
court the "before" and after" pics of these annual flood events?
Show how the high water flows move material around in the
river, show a few cow sized boulders rolling along with the
floodwater, and explain how the river will move/relocated tens
of thousands of yards of river bottom.

"Your Honor, dredging a river with an 8" hose wouldn't make
so much as a pimple on the ass of the annual flood. If the
Plaintiff's wish to sue Mother Nature then that's their business,
but my clients (dredgers in the state) are completely innocent
of the presumptions and accusations of the Plaintiff's".

It'd be damn tough for the Eco-warriors to stand in front
of those pics and still accuse us of damaging the river system.
They'd look like complete idiots if they still attempted to
rationalize stopping dredging based on their weak arguments.

Should be simply: "Case Closed".

Great idea, but logic doesn't exist in their world. Only their narrow minded view point. It might be worth a try though.

 

[Bejay]

It is analogous to the issue of the "UGLY SPIDER". Just because a spider is ugly does not mean it is BAD. More often than not the UGLY Spider does GOOD. Yet ignorance leads people to kill the spider. This Ugly Spider concept is carried out constantly by ignorant people today. Additionally the "GOODY GOODY" concept......"wanting to do good" overweighs the truth.

There is no doubt that the tail wags the dog today! Without the flooding and extreme "resulting turbidity" the necessary "SORTING" that creates the clean washed gravels and the carrying off of silts would not occur.

We could justify the dredging issue...and many scientific studies have shown that dredging does not do HARM to fish. Much evidence exists today showing that dredging can actually benefit spawning issues. Oh well....the tail continues to wag the dog.

Bejay

 

[Reed Lukens]

Ok so nobody could guess where this pic is from except me? There have to be plenty of you that have been to this spot. It's a famous tunnel where many raging river and rafting movies have been shot. Heck even George of the Jungle was filmed there about the time the greenies found it. Once up to a few years ago it was a thriving mining community and now it's a private fly fishing reserve... So here's the pic again in full flood then one from 2003. They are big pics - look at the guy in the middle of the old flood pic.

 

[Hefty1]

Reed...is that you sitting above that water flow?
Is that the tunnel on the middle fork of the American, below oxbow dam?

 

[Hefty1]

John Hoser and allot of other tnet members up in the Redding area have been getting HAMMERED all night long with rain.
Hope you are all HIGH and DRY!

 

[TheGoldProspector]

Less than a 1/4" rainfall so far in lower foothills in my area; so far

 

[Reed Lukens]

Me? No this is a copy of the original picture is from the 1890's right after the tunnel was made. I have the original picture now myself because it was part of my father’s, Grand father’s and Great Grand father’s historical photo’s collection of this area. It was passed to me a few years ago because I immediately recognized the tunnel in this historic flood stage picture. I’ve always wondered how many miner’s died that day that this picture was taken being that this was the flood that took and destroyed the lives of that community of miners and their families. This is the tunnel below Oxbow and directly below horseshoe bar. The “Horseshoe Bar Tunnel” was the first man made cut bedrock tunnel in the State.
Originally mined first in the 1850’s, around 1885 some Chinese prospectors came onto the bar and started mining at the head, or beginning of the Horse Shoe on a few acres and extracted over $12 million in gold at $17.00 per ounce. Without being able to go all the way to bedrock, and because of the high water table of the active river, the Chinese production efforts had no way of reaching the bottom of the channel, therefore leaving the majority of the gold behind.
So the tunnel was then created in the 1890’s by miners that wanted to access the gold rich riverbed. They blasted the tunnel through the narrowest part of the horseshoe and then blasted the chute now known as “Tunnel Chute” into the bedrock before it to divert the American river directly into the new tunnel. The miners went crazy because they now had their access to some of the richest ground ever found in California and the rush was on. Check out this link for more pictures –
https://books.google.com/books?id=S...hoe bar tunnel history american river&f=false
The work of cutting the Horseshoe Tunnel was commenced in the month of February, by a company composed of seventeen men, under the leadership of a gentleman from Maine, named Butterfield. The company was organized in Eldorado County at a mining camp then called "Bald Hill," and known as the “Horseshoe Bar Tunnel Company”. The object of the company was to turn the water out through the narrow ridge into a race leading from the mouth of the tunnel to the lower end of the bar near the mouth of Mad Canon. Thus draining the entire bed of the river for a distance of about 1½ miles. Then Black Powder was brought in and used to blast through the cliff wall, diverting the water out of the horseshoe so it could be mined with the above-water equipment that they had to use. Long Toms, sluices and gold pans were the tools of the day. There were no gold dredges or underwater systems invented back then.
In anticipation of the completion of the tunnel and the opening of' the diggings in the bed of the stream to the miners with claimed shares, hundreds of them flocked to the bar and quite a town was built of tents, board shanties, etc.
With the limited knowledge that the miners of that day had, coupled with the great disadvantages at which they labored under and the lack of proper tools and machinery to work with, caused the “Horse-shoe Bar Tunnel Company” enterprise to fail.

That first winter when the floodwaters came, logs jammed in the entrance of the tunnel and the floodwaters rushed back around the bar and wiped out the mining town. Many people drowned that day as the town was being washed away. What was left of the camp was soon deserted and the surviving miners and families scattered off to the mines up on the hills and in the higher, safer gulches of El Dorado and Placer counties.
I mined down here myself for a few years and pulled some nice nuggets out of there. Then I wrote a pictorial story for my face book page. If you click this link and go through the pictures in order on a pc, the complete story is written into the description of each picture.
https://www.facebook.com/reed.lukens/media_set?set=a.103601469701035.5570.100001535463873&type=3

 

[Armchair prospector]

They should arrest mother nature for that.

 

[jog]

I just don't get it.

How can any sane, logical person say that using a dredge
causes all kinds of heinous damage to a river or stream when
Ma Nature's annual "clean-up" tops it by 10,000 fold.

WHY hasn't some attorney gone in, showed the
court the "before" and after" pics of these annual flood events?
Show how the high water flows move material around in the
river, show a few cow sized boulders rolling along with the
floodwater, and explain how the river will move/relocated tens
of thousands of yards of river bottom.

"Your Honor, dredging a river with an 8" hose wouldn't make
so much as a pimple on the ass of the annual flood. If the
Plaintiff's wish to sue Mother Nature then that's their business,
but my clients (dredgers in the state) are completely innocent
of the presumptions and accusations of the Plaintiff's".

It'd be damn tough for the Eco-warriors to stand in front
of those pics and still accuse us of damaging the river system.
They'd look like complete idiots if they still attempted to
rationalize stopping dredging based on their weak arguments.

Should be simply: "Case Closed".

What they always say is that flooding is natural and dredging is not.

 

[jog]

Here is a pic from Quartzville creek east of Sweethome Oregon

For some reason I can't get my pic on here, "I really hate the new photo uploading system". "Finley Got It"

 

[Bejay]

One should give consideration to how much historical mining was done in Calif, Ore. & Alaska. The EXTENSIVE amount of activity was far far superior to the limited amount of mining activity that occurs today. In all instances the rivers and streams that had the highest historical activty have fish today. These are the very streams and rivers the anti crowd want to lock up.

But logic and common sense does not enter into the equation once the "greenies" have an agenda rooted from ignorance yet portraying a "goody too shoes" concept.

This morning in the major newspaper here in central Oregon a writer for that paper had a whole dissertational editorial about the need to halt logging on even private lands now. His argument began by stating: "the State of Oregon owns all the water" rivers/streams/etc.

HELLO!,,,,pure ignorance. WRONG: the Federal Government retained the water for the public and DID NOT give the State the water when Oregon was made a State. One will realize this when one studies the mining laws. AND the miner was GRANTED the right to the water. (States have Navigable waterways.....that is it!)

The Newspaper writer went on to describe a major landslide/debris slide that occurred from private harvested property: stating that it destroyed fish habitat. HELLO!....just where does the gravels/rocks/cobbles/sands/silts come from in a river or stream.........The heavens? Pure ignorance on the part of the Newspapers' opinion editorial columnist.

This is nothing new....we gripe and complain about it everyday....and it (ignorance doo gooders) goes on and on and on.

Bejay

 

[Hefty1]

Gets old doesn't it!

 

[jog]

One should give consideration to how much historical mining was done in Calif, Ore. & Alaska. The EXTENSIVE amount of activity was far far superior to the limited amount of mining activity that occurs today. In all instances the rivers and streams that had the highest historical activty have fish today. These are the very streams and rivers the anti crowd want to lock up.

But logic and common sense does not enter into the equation once the "greenies" have an agenda rooted from ignorance yet portraying a "goody too shoes" concept.

This morning in the major newspaper here in central Oregon a writer for that paper had a whole dissertational editorial about the need to halt logging on even private lands now. His argument began by stating: "the State of Oregon owns all the water" rivers/streams/etc.

HELLO!,,,,pure ignorance. WRONG: the Federal Government retained the water for the public and DID NOT give the State the water when Oregon was made a State. One will realize this when one studies the mining laws. AND the miner was GRANTED the right to the water. (States have Navigable waterways.....that is it!)

The Newspaper writer went on to describe a major landslide/debris slide that occurred from private harvested property: stating that it destroyed fish habitat. HELLO!....just where does the gravels/rocks/cobbles/sands/silts come from in a river or stream.........The heavens? Pure ignorance on the part of the Newspapers' opinion editorial columnist.

This is nothing new....we gripe and complain about it everyday....and it (ignorance doo gooders) goes on and on and on.

Bejay

I hope you write a response to the artical and set the record straight. It might do a lot of people good to hear the truth.

 

[Hefty1]

"I hope you write a response to the artical and set the record straight. It might do a lot of people good to hear the truth."


Ya know Jog....I tried that with some of the writers down hear at the Sacramento Bee...they didn't want to hear about it, it was their articles and didn't want to change them or write a new one that counterdicts theirs.