i agree DM
what i have learned with writing our reps a lot of them are not aware of a dredging ban, i may get one response for every dozen email sent out. or i guess thay get threre cronies to respnd, i have beentold to look into SWRCB a couple of times from the bozos LOL
thing is, not a lot of the reps are aware of SF wanting to use a dredge on the combie, heck even the BOS in Sierra County are not aware of this, they may not admit to this, but too many funny facial expression dead give away
i don't think it's taht much of a read, however i am afraid that maybe 98% of the memebers here just don't give a s@#$, i say this only cuz i have siad this
before not one person i have run into prospecting has been able to show a PLP card. and a lot of my late hunting, fishing, prospecting buddies have yet to sign up, whats the big deal 35 bucks
you all want to make dif, copy, paste e-mail ,snail mail,
The WMA has provided press releases with the best science written in the best manner to refute the statements of the environmentalist movement in the private and government sector. The have submitted them to every news paper and publication of public interest in every market. They have outright refused to print it! Letters to the editor are similarly refused for publication with exception. My own home town papers, the Foresthill Messenger and the Auburn Journal were willing to print our positions and we thank them for it.
So, surveys and poor studies are promoted as science, and real science is ignored. Year after year, we sit and watch the gold rest in our streams, our equipment in mothballs, and our personal property rights denied. So, if the science absolutely refutes the public health aspects and the other presumptions made for ending dredging, then why would fairly smart environmentalists work so hard to end this industry? Well, its not just this industry, its logging, agriculture, grazing, hunting and fishing in the Sierra Nevada. There is a larger agenda and this movement is part of the framework to establish these human free zones for animal priorities.
The appalling thing to see at that meeting the other night, was the sport fisherman groups supporting this effort. An unholy alliance! I believe that they really think, that by supporting The Sierra Fund and other such groups, volunteering for stream clean up and such, that these groups will leave them alone. I have it on good authority that they are next. Their boots, cross contaminating streams with bacteria, their crushing the food casings and spawning beds along the stream bed, and their insistence on feeding their families toxic mercury laden fish, will be the end of them also. The data through phony surveys are being built to end their hobby. It is only a matter of time and the first fish kill that can loosely be blamed on a fisherman's boot. Besides, fisherman actually kill fish. Lead free ammunition is already on the books. Hunters, your next. The same kind of pseudoscience will be used against you.
May I make one more comment here. We have common sense on our side! The question that was raised was, Did the Sierra Fund take and examine tissue samples from the survey sample group? No, they did not. So they tell you that fish have X amount of mercury, people eat X amount of fish. It would seem that a simple mercury tissue test would establish the theory that X amount of fish, consumed by each of the survey group, would clearly establish that those people are harmed.
They won't do that, as I am sure the results would not be helpful to them. Why would there be no detectable mercury impacts? Because all fish in all bodies of water in the world contain mercury. The "baseline" for each species has been established. With a few exceptions, our fish are just slightly above the "baseline". Well, what does that mean? Our fish are not so much more toxic than any other fish by species in the world. The reason the fish do not go "mad hatter" crazy, is that they consume Selenium, another common mineral dissolved in our water from the volcanic rocks all around us. Selenium and mercury bond, to each other, allowing the selenium to isolate the mercury away from doing damage to the fish and us. The fish, sequester the mercury with selenium, primarily in their skin and liver, and not so much in their flesh. Unless you eat sushi, you probably don't eat a lot of fish liver and skin. So when they tell you a fish has X amount of mercury, they are grinding the whole fish into soup, extracting the mercury, and measuring it. Not hardly a good method for establishing harmful levels of mercury from an actual fish filet.
For that reason, the California Department of Health Services has no records of mercury toxicity or resulting neurological impacts in any human in California, attributable to eating fish from our water shed.
If we have been dredging California waters for more than 60 years, and there were over 13,000 dredge permits operating in California during the last gold rush of the 1970's and 1980's, would you not think that there would have been a notable epidemic of fish kills and human mercury contamination. Nope, there was none, not even a noted singular case. So how is this a public health crises with only 3,000 dredge permits operating at the time of the moratorium?
Then there is this. It is estimated that 2 million pounds of mercury has been removed from California waters by,.....wait for it.....dredgers! Along with that mercury, tons of lead, nails, glass and other human trash is sucked out of the rivers by miners. The Stockton Chapter of GPAA has a monthly contest and tally of materials removed by miners. It is an impressive pile monthly, and I am sure they have a total tally that would knock your socks off.
So, currently, The Sierra Fund has applied for ungodly amounts of tax payer money to.....guess what.....dredge mercury out of Lake Crombie. So, their hydrologist, working at her desk for The Sierra Fund writes a slamming damnation of dredging for losing 3% to 5% of the mercury they collect, out the back of their dredge. Then, I am sure she is getting paid handsomely, from her private hydrologist consulting desk on the other side of the building, to write a glowing support for The Sierra Fund project to have the NID dredge mercury out of lake Crombie, where a 5% loss of mercury out of the backside of their dredge, is not such a big deal.
So, I have to ask, if a dredger sucks 97% of a glob of mercury out of a glory hole in his stream, and he loses 3% back to the stream, and the next year, sucks 97% of the 3%.......how long would it be before that section of stream is free of mercury.....forever. What really sucks, is that on my mining claim, if mercury was ever used, there is none now. 25 years of mining and I have no occurrence of mercury puddles or gold amalgamation.
OK, do you get now? Do you know why I am outraged? If you stayed with me this long, it's because you have a dog in this fight. If you lost interest, it's because you really don't have the time to watch the whole movie.
The movie is at the end. We have, reasonably, rationally, intelligently, and in a well spoken manner, tried to roll back the plague of regulation and outright dismissal of our mining operations. We are out of our seats and we are in a rage. For those timid souls who don't like conflict, well, you would have not done well when our founding fathers rebelled and revolted against imperial tyranny from their government. This government is not protecting us in fair and level playing field. They are complicit and in bed with the environmentalist extremist movement. We are mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore.
James Hutchings
Foresthill CA.
