THE QUEST FOR GOLD GOES ON
Rex Burress
Suction dredge-miners want to get the CA ban removed as bad as marijuana growers want full reign to grow their weed! When money is involved, mankind makes extraordinary effort to reach paydirt! Presently, the courts have left the suction mining ban stand.
The trouble with suction-dredging for gold, which was stated in 2009 when the moratorium went into effect, is that previous use of poisonous mercury by 1800-era miners can be stirred out of the sands endangering aquatic life. The stream-bed turmoil of dredges also causes erosion that destroys fish spawning grounds and habitats.
I have watched small dredges at work on Spanish Creek near Oakland Camp 20 years ago when a miner had a “Big-foot Claim” that he worked during the summer camper season, camping in a trailer and donning his wet suit during the day to shovel large amounts of gravels through his sluice box. It involved a noisy, polluting gas motor supplying forced air that displaced a lot of stream bed. He had a few ounces of fine gold in a jar, but admitted he barely paid expenses. The ravaged stream-bed takes a long time to recover.
The onerous side effect is that those claims disturb the environment for nature watchers, fishermen, and pebble hunters as well as establishing an uneasy 'privacy' atmosphere. Claims along Yellow Creek Trail angle off the Feather River at Belden were an example when I hiked that rugged canyon in summer camp days. Every foot of that once gold-rich stream had a claim and you had to tread lightly. The rapid-water creek was home to the water ouzel, pileated woodpecker, mink, trout, Indian Rhubarb, yellow maple in the fall,with plenty of bear signs. To the naturalist, it is not a proper place for gold mining.
However, in the 1849 gold rush days, the entire Feather River was invaded, streams diverted, soil strewn, trees cut, mountains hosed in half, and the land left in disarray. Only nature's ability to heal in time and lawful regulations has allowed a recovery. Most of the gold is gone, but enough remains to stir the imagination and greed when the price hovers over $1,000 per ounce. Buyers are the bane of sanity when the price is high on things like gold and drugs. Without buyers, there would be no diggers and natural resource abusers.
Afterall, people go wild when a 54-pound gold nugget is found, as was the case in 1850 up on Dog Town Ridge around Old Magalia! Today that discovery site looks like a mine-field.
Imagine finding a 2,000-pound gold mass, as was once found in Australia. Imagine the sudden panic at how to lift it; move it; guard it; market it!
We have some vivid examples of historic gold mining right here around Oroville--“the city with a heart of gold!” [Not apparent in today's city treasury]. The great piles of eroded rock southwest of town are the left-overs of dredging that scoured the river to bedrock, changing the course and cause of the river in some areas. Aquatic habitat destruction lingered for years, and it's a wonder the salmon even returned. The dredger method, as well as the hydraulic erosion times, has had its day, although we had an unplanned sample when the emergency dam spillway failed, filling the river with sediment.
I mourn for you, Feather River. The water survives, but the shores have been beaten by machinery, plastered with roadways, broached by bridges, throttled by dams, drained by tunnels, gleaned of minerals, clogged with broken concrete, stripped of woody plants, poisoned by chemicals, until the riparian corridor gasps to retain a semblance of its wild nature. Blessings on thee, fanciful Feather River of the future! Fare thee well.
“What would the world be, once bereft,/Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,/
O let them be left, wildness and wet;/Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
--Gerald Hopkins [1844-1889]
“Second-hand gold is as good as new.”
“In many a land I've heard it sung,/As strong as love when love is young,/
That is but the silver;/Here is the gold,/As strong as love when love is old.”