So the CAWB didn’t toe the political line as some expected. Therefore, since that was really all they left us with, we made that argument, which was quite compelling that this is a ban and an illegal prohibition on small scale mining. It is a final process, but not a mining method. As we pointed out in testimony at the Senate hearing on SB1222, panning is not, nor has it ever been a mining method. Kind of hard to say an airplane is a wheelbarrow just because both have wheels and that is precisely what the vague language in SB637 did. We pointed out that this morphing of language was illegal, immoral and adversely affected 10’s of thousands of people. People were cited, their equipment confiscated and fines were paid. High bankers, water pumps, track wheel chairs, trucks and even sluice boxes. SB637 morphed into a defacto prohibition on mining as it then labeled all things as suction dredges. We believe the sponsors of SB637, Izzy Martin and the enviro group The Sierra Fund, along with their Senator who brought the bill forward, Ben Allen, a Democrat from Hollywood believed the CAWB would toe the political line and just slow walk, or deny permits all along. As a part of SB637 (The Suction Dredge Bill) signed into law in January of 2016, it was mandated that the California Water Board (CAWB) study and evaluate whether permitting should be allowed in the state, and if so, the CAWB was tasked with creating a permitting structure.
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