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California Water Quality is aggressively working on a water permit that will support suction dredging!

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 4:54 am
by Dave Mack
At the invitation of California Water Quality Control, myself and several other industry leaders were urged to attend two separate meetings in Sacramento during this past month of August.

Please note that these were informal meetings to help the Water Board better understand the way our industry works before they release a draft proposal. Once the draft is released, everyone will be invited to participate in the formal process. Nobody has been excluded.

Having devoted multiple hours in two meetings with the Water Board staff, and listening closely to their comments, my personal impression is that this mid-level staff has been directed to develop a water quality permit scheme that will work for our industry. I have not detected any animosity towards our industry. In fact, Diana Messina, a very capable person, who is the Section Chief of the Water Board’s Surface Water Permitting Section, made the bold statement that “the Water Board is bound by law to come up with a permitting scheme that will work for our industry.”

Said another way: my impression is that this staff has no dog in the fight to prevent us from getting back into the water.

According to Water Quality staff, they are hoping to release a draft permit for public comment sometime in February 2019 and have the Statewide Water Permit finalized in April of 2019.

We have composed a substantial explanation about this in our September newsletter which can be found here:
http://www.goldgold.com/newsletter-september-2018.html

Re: California Water Quality is aggressively working on a water permit that will support suction dredging!

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 2:23 pm
by Jim_Alaska
I wanted to add to this post by Dave so that folks can keep up on this issue for themselves. I know that many don't care to read long topics and even fewer go to any links within long posts. So in that respect I thought I would post a couple of important links that Dave included in his post on this subject.

This first is a link to the Water Boards page that explains the process they are going through to implement this permit: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_is ... ining.html

This second link is for interested parties to be put on a list to be informed of progress on this issue by Water Boards: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_is ... ining.html

This is important stuff for those of us interested in suction dredging, so please go to these links to keep yourself informed.
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James Foley
Property and Mining Rights Advocate
Horse Creek, California
jfoley@sisqtel.net