Muddying the Waters in SW Oregon
The enviro-holocaust lobby is up in arms about gold-dredging on the Chetco River:
Gold mining project in Ore hits clean water snag
A Washington developer’s plan to mine for gold on one of Oregon’s most pristine salmon rivers has hit a roadblock.
By JEFF BARNARD, Seattle April 19, 2011 [here]
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A Washington developer’s plan to mine for gold on one of Oregon’s most pristine salmon rivers has hit a roadblock.
A state environmental official has concluded it could be difficult for developer Dave Rutan to get a clean water permit as long as he wants to use suction dredges to mine the Chetco River inside the Kalmiopsis Wilderness on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
Oregon administrative rules prohibit gold mining dredges from causing any increase in muddiness in rivers within certain federal wilderness areas, including the Kalmiopsis, or a 10 percent increase in muddiness in rivers designated essential salmon habitat, such as the Chetco.
The rules were cited in a Jan. 28 letter from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division administrator Neil Mullane to the U.S. Forest Service.
Dave Rutan, agent for Chetco River Mining & Explorations LLC of LaCenter, Wash., refused comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
The Forest Service has suspended an environmental review of Rutan’s gold mining plan until he resolves the issue with the state, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest spokeswoman Virginia Gibbons said.
“This is very good news for the wilderness, and it is also good for taxpayers, because basically the developer needs to get his state permit before the feds should have to look into it,” environmental consultant Andy Kerr said. “Just because you have a federal mining claim doesn’t give you carte blanche to destroy wilderness values.” …
The prospect that suction dredge mining could cause an increase in sedimentation that would be harmful to gravel beds where salmon lay their eggs landed the Chetco on the American Rivers list of the nation’s 10 most threatened rivers in 2010. …
What is ironic about these crocodile tears is that the Kalmiopsis Wilderness has been subjected to two of the largest Let It Burn fires in Oregon state history. The Silver Fire (1987) severely roasted 180,000 acres, including half of the 100,000-acre Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area. Then in 2002 the Biscuit Fire reburned the Kalmiopsis and an additional 400,000 acres [here, here, here].
Those fires fried the vegetation, including old growth trees [here, here] and caused extreme erosion — soil was sucked up into fire plumes and blown off the site, as well as eroded directly into the Chetco River, leaving behind only a rubble of heavier stones [here].
The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest doesn’t give a hang about destroying vast landscapes with catastrophic fires, denuding soils, causing massive erosion, and burying salmon gravels in mud. They yearn to apply Let It Burn to every square inch of the RR-SNF [here, here, here, here]
During discussions with the RR-SNF staff and their toady envro-holocaust supporters, they said directly and unequivocally that they wished for “natural” fires to incinerate the forest, regardless of what effects that might have of streams and aquatic health.
At no time, ever, has the RR-SNF consulted with Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division administrator Neil Mullane before allowing holocausts to incinerate whole watersheds, nor has Neil Mullane and the ODEQ requested any such consultations, nor has Neil Mullane or the ODEQ voiced the slightest concern over the massive water (or air) pollution arising from those fires.
It’s easy to pick off individuals who make a tiny mess, and crow in the papers with phony holier-than-thou environmentalism, but when we lift the media/bureaucratic veil and see the gargantuan destruction the whiners themselves have engendered, the shock wave of hypocrisy knocks you off your feet.
by TreeC123
There is a big difference, ecologically speaking, between pulses of sediment caused by natural disturbances like fire, versus chronic sediment caused by roads, dispersed clearcutting, mining, etc.
Are you aware of the study done in SW Oregon showing that over thousands of years the erosion from fire is vastly overwhelmed by the erosion from roads and logging?
Reply: Yes, I am aware that the erosion from roads is quite different from the erosion caused by catastrophic holocausts. The Biscuit Fire swept the soil off site and left a rubble of stones across hundreds of thousands of acres. See [here]
Erosion following the Yellow Pine Fires of 2007 dumped entire hillsides into salmon streams, far in excess of what roads ever did [here]
Speaking of “natural”, TreeC123, did you know that most fires in SW Oregon have been human-set for the last 10,000+ years? And that human road networks have laced SW Oregon for the same millennia? “Natural” is in the eye of the beholder. The catastrophic ecological destruction wrought by “natural” holocausts is much, much worse than anything humanity has ever done there — indeed human stewardship has protected nature in SW Oregon since the end of the last Ice Age.
by Al
“Are you aware of the study done in SW Oregon showing that over thousands of years the erosion from fire is vastly overwhelmed by the erosion from roads and logging? ”
I haven’t seen that study (reference, please?), but my statistical alarm bells go off when I see regression data apparently being extrapolated way beyond its actual data space (logging history dating from maybe 1850 at the earliest being extrapolated over “thousands of years?”).
I’m quite skeptical!
Of course, man-added erosion is 1000 times worse than the “natural” erosion of Let-Burn fires. *smirk* Could that teaspoon added to the big bucket of “natural” mud breach the “tipping point” of our watersheds?