{"id":3207,"date":"2016-08-22T14:44:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T21:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=3207"},"modified":"2016-08-22T14:44:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T21:44:39","slug":"california-high-court-upholds-ban-on-dredges-to-extract-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=3207","title":{"rendered":"California high court upholds ban on dredges to extract gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
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California’s ban on the use of suction dredges to extract gold from rivers is legal and not overridden by a 19th century federal law that allows mining on federal land, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The court’s unanimous decision was a victory for environmentalists and a blow to miners, who argued that the ban essentially stopped gold mining because doing it by hand is labor intensive and makes the enterprise unprofitable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Environmentalists say suction dredge mining risks killing fish and stirring up toxic mercury.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The high court’s ruling came in an appeal of a criminal case in which miner Brandon Rinehart was convicted of a misdemeanor for suction dredge mining without a permit in 2012 and sentenced to three years of probation.<\/p>\n

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Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar, writing for the court, said the federal Mining Law of 1872 did not guarantee a right to mine free from regulation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, its goal was to protect miners’ property rights involving the federal land to which they laid claim, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The mining laws were neither a guarantee that mining would prove feasible nor a grant of immunity against local regulation, but simply an assurance that the ultimate original landowner, the United States, would not interfere by asserting its own property rights,” she wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rinehart’s attorney, James Buchal, said the high court showed a “casual disregard” for federal law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He said Rinehart would likely ask the court to review its ruling or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Suction dredges are powerful underwater vacuums that suck up rocks, gravel and sand from riverbeds to filter out gold.<\/p>\n

More at USNews.com<\/a> >>><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California’s ban on the use of suction dredges to extract gold from rivers is legal and not overridden by a 19th century federal law that allows mining on federal land, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The court’s unanimous decision was a victory for environmentalists and a blow to miners, who argued that the ban … Continue reading California high court upholds ban on dredges to extract gold<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,15,9,13,6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fish","category-history","category-otherwatersheds","category-safety","category-salmon","category-water","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3208,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3207\/revisions\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}