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News Round-Up
NEW RULES FOR GOLD SUCKERS
Gold miners using suction dredges to extract the precious yellow ore from the state's rivers may face new regulations later this year. These will be the first formal statewide controls over the dredges, says Fish & Game's Ken Anderson. The agency hopes to reduce damage done to fish, stream banks and riparian vegetation, he says. The regulations will limit the size of the nozzles on the dredges, restrict the use of power winches, which can move large logs and boulders, and prohibit the miners from altering the stream banks.
A draft Environmental Impact Report was released in early February. Fish & Game had proposed more stringent regs last year, but these were withdrawn after protest from mining groups. Anderson says some of the new controls are still "pretty contentious." The agency hopes to have them in place by the time dredging activities pick up in the spring, although some miners are pushing to delay them until 1995. Contact: Ken Anderson (916)657-2392
STATE WATER BUDGETING
According to a newly updated California Water Plan, the state won't have quite enough water to slake the thirst of its burgeoning population by the year 2020. The 750-page, three-inch-thick plan updates a document whose earliest draft in 1957 was an engineer's wish-list of new dams and diversions. The 1993 version is short on dams - proposing a few new reservoirs -- and long on water conservation, recycling, marketing and redistribution. It even suggests that some irrigated farmland may have to be retired. Projected shortfalls in a typical rainfall year will amount to 2.2-4.2 million acre-feet (maf), according to the report, and urban water demand will leap from 6.7 to 10.5 maf per year. Contact: Naser Bateni (916)653-9883
GOLF COURSE GOING UNDER
Everyone agrees that the dredging of Oakland's inner harbor should get underway as soon as possible. But some local residents have concerns about the use of the Galbraith Golf Course as a disposal site. On January 20, the Sierra Club's Northern Alameda County Group held a public meeting on the issue. "We live here, and we think that our health should be of some concern," said the Club's Jacquee Castain. Over forty people attended the meeting, airing concerns about everything from the loss of a good golf course to fears that contaminated sediments would blow into neighbor-hoods as they dried. The Port's Tom Gwynn responded that the disposal process is undergoing thorough environmental review. Contact: Jacquee Castain (510)568-5333
BAY FILL (INGS)
City officials in San Francisco are worried about tooth decay, or at least the prospect that mercury used in dental fillings is harming Bay water quality. Dental amalgams, which consist of about one half mercury and one half silver, are routinely ground up by dentists and flushed down the drain. According to a study by the Department of Public Works, the amalgams make up 8 - 13 percent of the mercury-containing waste that arrives at local sewage treatment facilities. The city may require dentists to install special centrifuges to remove the mercury. Dentists protest that there is little evidence that any mercury actually leaches out of the amalgam into the water. Contact: (415)695-7363
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