Help Protect Salmon from Suction Dredge Mining

"Think of the Northwest," writes Carl Safina in his essay The Soul Who Swims, and salmon soon come to mind." Southwest Oregon is part of what has been called “Salmon Nation,” but this definitive icon of the Pacific Northwest is struggling after more than a century of dam-building, habitat modification and mining. Oregon has a number of threatened and critically endangered fish species, including Coho and Chinook salmon.

Click here to take action now to better regulate suction dredge mining in Oregon.

Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is charged with implementing the federal Clean Water Act. The goal of this cornerstone 1972 law was to have eliminated the discharge of pollutants into our waters by 1985. While this lofty goal has not been met, the Clean Water Act has helped us to make great strides in improving water quality across the U.S. However, we have a long way to go to restore water quality and salmon runs. Currently, DEQ is accepting public comments on a statewide draft pollution permit for suction dredging and they need to hear from those who value water quality and fish.

Suction dredge mining is the use of floating engine-powered machines with hoses that vacuum up the bottom of a stream and filter out gold. The machines then discharge riverbed materials back into the water column, creating pollutant plumes and piles of debris. Miners also often operate in groups and stage mining “jamborees,” which present the risk of cumulative harm to waterways and riparian areas.

Salmon require very specific parameters to successfully spawn. In fact, it could be considered a miracle that salmon spawn given the natural challenges they navigate through their life cycle. Suction dredging can harm salmon and other fish by altering the structure of the stream channel, destabilizing spawning beds, increasing sedimentation, re-suspending contaminants such as mercury and other heavy metals, and causing detrimental behavioral changes in fish. Dredging can also suck up the eggs of lamprey, sculpin and other fish into the dredge itself. Furthermore, many streams already violate water quality standards, including high temperatures that can be lethal for cold-water fish. Suction dredging clouds otherwise clear-flowing water, increasing its thermal absorption capacity, further stressing fish.

TAKE ACTION: Please click here to send a quick auto-email to DEQ, or use the sample letter to mail in your own personal letter. Public comments are due June 8, 2010.