Mother Nature Shows Why Anti-Dredging Laws Are Ridiculous

DizzyDigger

Gold Member
Dec 9, 2012
6,354
12,884
Concrete, WA
Detector(s) used
Nokta FoRs Gold, a Gold Cube, 2 Keene Sluices and Lord only knows how many pans....not to mention a load of other gear my wife still doesn't know about!
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
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.

USGS.12194000.01.00060..20141121.20141128.log.0.p50.jpg

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.
 

Last edited:
Upvote 0
"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.


Hits the nail directly on the head Hefty. They do not want to hear it. Does not promote THEIR agenda. Who thinks the Newspapers tell news? NOT!

Bejay
 

Our local paper is anti- dredging. Anti... even thinking about touching the river! The parent company owns a few Newspapers in OR.
They give a lot of money to the "save our Chetco river" (BS) They also fund KS wild. (Major BS!) They will NOT publish pro mining letters. A few of us had an author draft a fact based letter, very well written, non confrontational. Nope!

The local sporting goods store is owned by a gold prospector/miner. He sells a lot of equipment, highbankers, sluices, pans etc. In the summer they had a "hands on" prospecting how to. Reporters from the paper showed up and caused problems. Booo!
 

Our local paper is anti- dredging. Anti... even thinking about touching the river! The parent company owns a few Newspapers in OR.
They give a lot of money to the "save our Chetco river" (BS) They also fund KS wild. (Major BS!) They will NOT publish pro mining letters. A few of us had an author draft a fact based letter, very well written, non confrontational. Nope!
The local sporting goods store is owned by a gold prospector/miner. He sells a lot of equipment, highbankers, sluices, pans etc. In the summer they had a "hands on" prospecting how to. Reporters from the paper showed up and caused problems. Booo!

Were I the owner of that sporting goods store I'd be looking to
open up a huge can of "legal whoop-ass" on those reporters and
their newspaper.

Show how they don't support businesses in their area, and how
they force their political agenda by harassing local business owners.
SUE for damages and potential lost revenue, then PICKET their
buildings and newsstands.

Two can play that game.

Post up their name and address for "Letters to the Editor", and
some of us will spam 'em with written letters questioning everything
they do, including their patriotism. Question them about each and every
source they use for newsprint, ink, etc. 'cause somewhere in there
they are breaking their own rules.,...make 'em look like the hypocrites
they are!..
moon.gif~original
 

I was hoping to try out my new dredge this weekend but with the pineapple express coming through the area it's not going to happen this weekend. Still headed up there though and I'll get some pictures.
 

From watching the TV weather it looks like Northern Cal. and
Oregon are going to really get slammed with heavy rain for the
next few days.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the banks of those flooding
rivers...dangerous stuff. It can seriously undercut the banks, and
then you step out on what looks like solid ground, the bank breaks
from the weight and you immediately find yourself caught in very
cold flood water....and your life expectancy is counted in minutes
and seconds.

We just had a power outage here, and not knowing how long it
would last I drug out my 7KW generator, and found that the SOB
wouldn't start...too much old gas in the tank. :BangHead:

Power came back on an hour later, but we've gone as long as
5 days without out here in the styx..rural areas are always the
last to get turned on.

Cleaned the plug well, and now need to siphon out all that
3 year old gas, clean the fuel filter and get fresh gas in there.
Should start then...it's a good motor and has always started
on the 1st or 2nd pull. Wore my ass out on it today and
got "no joy" on every pull. My bad for not keeping it better
maintained!
 

Yesterday was our worst day of the storm. Kept waking up in the early am due to squalls and branches bouncing off the roof (we live in a travel trailer). Right after I get up, the power goes off and I hear 3 transformers go bang...power comes back on for some reason but happy for it. And I know what you mean about unsupported ground. When we went into town to watch the surf...here's a guy standing on what looks like a nice green lawn near the edge of one of our many cliffs along the road. AND, he had his young son on his shoulders leaning/looking over. I know he's standing on the top of a "C". When ever I see something like that I think "PLEASE! Do NOT involve me in your stupidity." I didn't wanna stay for any more of that drama, so we went right down to sea level. From a respectable distance, we were watching 30 waves hit 60 foot rocks that sent spray up 100'. So NATURALLY some young adults want a closer look. You should have seen em run when the "Big One" came in. They lived in spite of themselves.

Good to hear from you again btw. We both got a lot on our shoulders right now...hang in there Mike.:icon_thumleft:
 

Trip

Rivers and Creeks had dropped a little today so maybe I'll get out tomorrow after all with the dredge. Snow level has dropped a little bit but oh well. I was up exploring some of the side creeks and found one of the old rock walls the miners built with 100+ years ago. The wall is about 300 feet long and maybe 15 feet tall.

IMG_0424.JPGIMG_0423.JPG
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0425.JPG
    IMG_0425.JPG
    1.9 MB · Views: 107
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. :BangHead:

They have created a solution in search of a problem!

Make the accusations, then look for evidence to back up their claims, even if they have to falsify it!
 

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

Reed, the facebook page you listed don't work for me ?!

it says : "Profile Unavailable Sorry, this profile is not available at the moment. Please try again shortly."

What's wrong ?
 

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


For the sake of argument I will agree that fish spawning cycles cooperate with seasonal natural flooding in a way that allows them two thrive... However, this does not mean timed dredging is therefore harmful.
Additionally...the eruption of Mt St Helens happened on May 18, long after the spawning cycles had ended and eggs were still in the gravels. The rivers ran thick with concrete like slurry. Within 10 years the fish runs recovered to the best in memory.

I do not believe dredging done right will harm a fish
 

Seems there may be some misconception of the point I made earlier. The explicit point is that dredging does not harm fish if in stream activity is not done when gravels are rich with eggs. That is the point. Mother nature and species have evolved to coordinate such things. I thought I pointed out the whole issue of "Timed Dredging"....that was specifically my point.

With that in mind it is obvious that the "Timed Dredging" could become an issue of overreach by an agency. But my earlier statement was " So an argument can justifiably be made that extensive dredging at the wrong time of the year can/could harm spawning fish " The wrong time would of course be of consequence and used by the "anti crowd". So you reiterated my point when you said: "I do not believe dredging done right will harm a fish" . And even at that fisheries recover. Just saying the same thing...at least I thought I was!

Bejay
 

To fish or to dredge........

As both a motorized dredge operator and an avid fisherman listening and understanding both sides of the arguments is important. My father and I have fished a specific river system for over 15 years (one that had extensive splash dams built on it decades ago) and have seen it go through all kinds of changes. Ten years ago you could barely find a salmon carcass on the banks in December on this river but three years ago you couldn't get out of the truck without almost gagging from all the dead salmon. Last year, there was hardly anything. Fish go in cycles we all know this......

Three years ago (I believe) on March 13th it started raining on this particular river. The previous day my dad and friend had caught 13 steelhead between the two of them. It didn't stop raining for almost 40 days. The rivers were insanely blown out and I guarantee that no steelhead spawned after that time and certainly very few eggs survived. The next year was amazing....on a river where the average steelhead is 5 to 10 lbs we didn't catch a single fish for three months that was under 10 lbs. I'm assuming (no scientific proof) everything that had not spawned the previous year returned the next year as a much bigger fish. The big waters pushing them back out to the ocean. We were catching fish that should have been 8 lbs but were 15 lbs all season long. I don't think we caught anything under 10 lbs until the last few weeks of March.

During our time fishing on this river we have had holes which have were the greatest holes ever, disappear and be entirely filled in the next year or be 50 foot deep holes that nothing holds in. Mother nature moves more gravel in one storm on one river than all of the dredgers in Oregon combined do in one season. And yet steelhead, salmon, trout, and numerous other animals survive every year to reproduce. Not only reproduce but as explained above to come back the next year and be that much bigger.

While most of us are responsible enough to NOT dredge in redds with spawning salmon on them and typically we dredge in cobble too big for salmon or steelhead to even spawn in, we require laws that help prevent the small amount of irresponsible people from ruining an already poorly state managed salmon and steelhead hatchery. That doesn't mean we need to go to the extremes of banning all motorized dredging, there is a middle ground here, it's just a matter of keeping people who have no clue of the facts from pushing their agenda on everyone else. The state needs to stop continuously trying to get paid their yearly fees for letting us do something the federal government granted us years ago and people who have never seen a fish in a river or dredge operating need to quit trying to tell us what we can and can't do.
 

So lets see if I can make the point I was trying to have people avoid making.....at the beginning of this thread. Per what I read.

"Because floods cause tremendous amounts of erosion and turbidity dredging has no adverse impacts on fish.....Just look at what nature already does!"

Personally that scenario will get miners nowhere...IMHO

As has been pointed out in many previous postings on this thread; there are management issues (note I did not say State!) that can easily address such concerns. My concept would require Federal jurisdiction and either an EA or EIS on public lands open to mineral entry. State has NO authority....other than that given it by miners willing to accept it.


Bejay
 

So lets see if I can make the point I was trying to have people avoid making.....at the beginning of this thread. Per what I read.

"Because floods cause tremendous amounts of erosion and turbidity dredging has no adverse impacts on fish.....Just look at what nature already does!"

Personally that scenario will get miners nowhere...IMHO
Why is that Bejay? To those that are absolutely against mining and miners NO argument will be accepted. To those that understand our plight this argument should make perfect sense. The middle 60% either don't care or would be able to see the logic of the above statement.

As has been pointed out in many previous postings on this thread; there are management issues (note I did not say State!) that can easily address such concerns. My concept would require Federal jurisdiction and either an EA or EIS on public lands open to mineral entry. State has NO authority....other than that given it by miners willing to accept it.
I don't trust the Fed or State authorities to do the right thing or act in an intelligent manner. :dontknow:
 

Oh geez. 1. Why does the anti crowd do what they do? 2. Does logic matter?
1. Ignorance of the real issue and what I call "THE UGLY SPIDER" perception.
2. You can't preach logic to a crowd of people who won't listen, or even want to!

So who do you want to trust? State authority (law), or Federal Authority (law). I'll offer you a good place to find the answer (the classroom portion would suffice).
http://americanmininglawforum.myfastforum.org/index.php

Give consideration to ACTS (LAW). Then give consideration to such things as ESA etc.

But because the anti crowd wants to distort and use lies does not require miners to do the same....even though un-intentionally. Truth and laws matter.

Bejay
 

Last edited:
Your welcome. Learn to copy and paste. Then create a carry portfolio of valuable printed info. Carry it out in the field when mining. If and when you get any kind of authority challenge from a USFS or BLM or ??? agent feel free to share the info with them. No need to argue your point....let them read it for themselves. Knowledge is a great tool....only wish all miners would become informed and educated. Knowing how to use knowledge is the key though!

Bejay
 

Here is an old clip that I thought I would share.
 

Top Member Reactions

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top