Suction Dredge Report 2nd Half, Biased yet Informative Options

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Oregon Water Resources Department (WRD)


• WRD grants water rights throughout the state, and is responsible for assuring that
the free flowing character of Scenic Waterways is maintained.
• The agency has determined that recreational mining, which it has defined in
regulation as suction dredging with a hose no larger than 4 inches in diameter,
does not create a diversion of water and therefore has no effect on water quantities
and flow.

WRD is responsible for granting water rights to various users; they are the body
responsible for permitting and prohibiting various uses of the state.s water. Under the Scenic Waterways Act, WRD (and the Water Resources Commission, which directs the activities of WRD) has multiple responsibilities. Within Scenic Waterways, WRD has the authority to deny a number of uses of water, including dams, impoundments, certain mining operations, and many other activities. Curbing these activities in certain parts of the state was, in fact, one of the primary reasons for establishing the Scenic Waterways System in the first place.

These types of activities are not eligible to receive water rights
on Scenic Waterways. This is true not only on stretches of rivers designated as scenic, but it can also be applicable to areas upstream as well. WRD must make determinations about the likelihood of an upstream activity to significantly affect water quantity. If an activity will ultimately affect the free-flowing character of a Scenic Waterway downstream, then WRD is not supposed to grant a water right for that activity.

WRD will grant new water rights until there is an effect on water quantity, and
there is a standard that has been developed to weigh the effects of new water rights. This standard is known as the Diack flow, which is the amount of water needed in a river to preserve its free-flowing character. The establishment of Diack flows resulted from a lawsuit brought against the state. The case established that WRD is required to limit water usage if such usage will diminish the free flowing character of scenic rivers. WRD has been routinely criticized for not meeting the goals of the Diack flows, and allowing too much water to be allocated.

WRD is also charged under the Scenic Waterways Act to work collaboratively
with other state agencies on actions that involve Scenic Waterways. WRD is to review and concur on management plans for adjacent lands, on land condemnation actions, and on new additions to the Scenic Waterway System, and the agency is given an opportunity to make comments whenever any of these actions take place.


WRD Considers Recreational Mining to Have Minimal Impact; It Does Not Divert or
Take Water

With respect to recreational placer mining, WRD has little to no involvement in
the day-to-day management of these activities. WRD wrote the regulation that defined the parameters of what is meant by the term recreational, and from this definition, DSL and DEQ have established their permitting guidelines and procedures. The definition of recreational as utilizing mechanized or hydraulic equipment, except a motorized surface dredge with a suction hose intake four inches or less in diameter has effectively meant that no recreational equipment is capable of moving enough water to divert or disrupt the free flowing character of any of the states designated Scenic Waterways. These waterways are not small streams and tributaries, but rivers whose flow cannot be significantly altered by a suction dredge with a four-inch hose.

Moreover, water pulled into a suction dredge for mining purposes stays in the river.

There is no taking of the resource out of the river. Thus WRD has determined that there is no diversion or taking of water by recreational placer miners, no water quantity issue at stake, and thus no affect on the free flowing character of the waterway. As far as the responsibility of WRD is concerned, recreational placer mining has de minimus effect. Therefore the agency has no permitting authority or responsibility for this activity, and has expressed no opposition to recreational placer mining in scenic waterways with respect to its responsibilities.

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Recreation Crowding
Crowding is an important and widely studied social variable that affects
recreation experience quality. It has often been assumed that increases in density equal
increases in crowding, but Shelby, Vaske and Heberlein (1989) conclude that this is
overly simplistic. Density and crowding are separate constructs. Density is a numerical
description of the actual number of people in an area, and is thus objectively neither good
nor bad. Crowding, on the other hand, is explicitly defined as a negative evaluation of a
particular level of density (Shelby and Heberlein 1986).
Social norms – widely shared standards for what constitutes crowded conditions –
can be identified using visitor surveys and are strongly affected by context (Shelby and
Heberlein 1986). People are less likely to feel crowded by other people in an urban park
than by the same number of people in a wildland area. People are also less likely to feel
crowded by others perceived as similar to themselves, and engaged in similar activities
(Manning 1999). Visitor preferences, prior expectations and experience in the area,
commitment to the activity, characteristics of other visitors encountered, and an array of
situational variables can all influence how crowded people feel (Graefe, Vaske and Kuss
1984; Manning 1999).
Notwithstanding this complexity, use level is a practical, easily measured, and to
some extent manageable indicator of recreation quality, particularly at sites where
activity types are relatively homogeneous. The causes of crowding can be harder to
identify when different activities occur concurrently. In any case, however, density and
crowding are related to the concept of visitor capacity, an idea borrowed from the
biological sciences and expanded to include (in addition to physical constraints) the
psychological dimension of perceived crowding (Manning, Lime and Hof 1996).
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Visitor Capacity
Two fundamental responsibilities of public land recreation managers are to
protect lands under their charge from unacceptable impacts resulting from overuse or
misuse, and to maintain and enhance the quality of recreation experiences for visitors.
How these responsibilities are met varies greatly because of the diverse landscapes,
management goals, and activity types available on public lands. In all cases, however,
balancing resource protection with public access and recreation requires managers to
understand something about the capacity of the area to support visitation.
Visitor capacity is defined as “…a prescribed number and type of [recreationists]
that an area will accommodate given the desired natural/cultural resource conditions,
visitor experiences, and management program” (Haas 2002). Biophysical aspects of
visitor capacity include cumulative ecological impacts and physical space available.
These categories are referred to as ecological capacity, such as plant, animal, soil or
water impacts, and physical capacity, such as number of sites available at a campground
(Shelby and Heberlein 1986).
Visitor capacity also has social components, for example, the number of people
visible, the number of encounters with other parties per hour or day, or encounters with
parties of a different type or size (Shelby and Heberlein 1986). Social variables such as
the activities and behavior of other visitors can influence perceptions of crowding and
conflict, so they are important to consider when assessing visitor capacity. This is
especially true in wildland settings, where interaction with nature and solitude are
essential attributes of many visitors’ experiences, and contacts with other people can
affect experience quality as much or more than biophysical factors.
When developing visitor capacity guidelines in areas with heavy demand,
managers must first define types of activities and experiences that are appropriate there.
This is a critical step, because biophysical and social aspects of visitor capacity, and
strategies to manage them, will vary widely with the type of visitor experience being
targeted. Moreover, overall capacity may be lower if managers are trying to
accommodate recreationists with diverging goals or a history of incompatibility and thus
more likely to conflict than visitors who generally share similar goals and activities.
Defining appropriate experiences and setting visitor capacity standards are
difficult because of the variable and contextual nature of how humans perceive and
experience the natural environment. This is contentious because these decisions directly
affect who gets to do what, when and where. These recreation allocation issues can be
value laden and controversial, so experts consistently stress the importance of explicitly
spelling out the types of recreation opportunities the area in question will be managed for,
and why. Professional judgment is an appropriate basis for making visitor capacity
determinations, but such decisions must be principled and reasoned (Haas 2002).
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Recreation Conflict, Crowding and Capacity in Oregon Scenic Waterways
Academic distinctions between conflict, crowding and capacity help us
understand them, but in the real world these issues are closely related and often
interdependent. The crux of the matter for managers of popular waterways is how to
accommodate heavy visitation while meeting goals for resource protection and
experience quality. This usually means allowing visitors as much freedom as possible
while mitigating the factors that exacerbate conflict, crowding and resource degradation
which (other than being denied access to a site) are the most common the most common
factors that degrade recreation experience quality.
Conflict arising from the presence of recreational placer mining in Oregon Scenic
Waterways seems to be based on both goal interference and social value differences. The
goal of non-motorized recreationists to experience the natural characteristics of a
waterway may be compromised by motor noise, turbidity or visible evidence of mining or
miners’ campsites. But there is also considerable evidence that divergence of social
values seems to play a significant role in these conflicts. Actual blockage of boaters’
routes downstream does occur and is a potentially serious safety issue, but this is not the
source of most boater-miner conflicts.
Differences between miners’ and other river recreationists’ views about
“appropriate” recreation were consistent with Jackson’s typology. Many visitors seem to
fit the category of “appreciative” recreationists, while miners have characteristics of both
“consumptive” and “mechanized” recreationists and held more utilitarian views about
human-environment relationships. Thus miners saw nothing wrong with recreational
mining, while other visitors often held that recreation activities with a lighter “ecological
footprint” are most appropriate in waterways protected for their natural qualities.
People are more likely to feel crowded and perhaps also more likely to experience
conflict when they encounter other visitors engaged in a different activity. This is
especially true if they feel the activity is inconsistent with the primary recognized
attributes and qualities of the area. Thus, overall visitor capacity may be affected if an
agency is trying to accommodate an activity that some groups feel is inappropriate and is
leading to conflict.
For example, visitors to popular Oregon Scenic Waterways such as the Rogue
may perceive conditions as crowded at lower visitor densities when use includes
recreational placer mining than if such use did not occur. A single miner may be
encountered by several boaters, who might reasonably have expected natural conditions
and thus may find the activity inappropriate and intrusive. This increases perceptions of
crowding more than an additional boater or riverside hiker might. When setting visitor
capacity, managers must consider a range of factors, any one of which might limit
capacity in a different situation. Capacity for overall use will depend on how well
individual uses co-exist, and how much impact they have on biophysical resources.
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Heavy recreation use is an increasingly important issue on several Oregon Scenic
Waterways, and managers believe rivers such as the Rogue and Deschutes may be
reaching visitor capacity. This places pressure on managers to look critically at
recreation activities with the highest potential to impact other river visitors and riparian
conditions. Recreational suction dredgers are not a large group, and many recreationists
contacted statewide indicated they had never encountered the activity. However, where
mining and non-motorized recreation occur together, conflict attributed to the presence
and actions of miners is fairly common. Safety can be an issue for boaters, but most
conflicts relate to noise, level of development, degraded ecological conditions, and
differences in social values.
For various reasons, these types of social conflicts usually do not lead to official
complaints, but miners do appear to have a larger impact on other visitors, rather than
vice versa. Managers report few complaints on rivers where recreational mining occurs
with boating, but as described previously, this is somewhat inconsistent with what boaters
reported, as would be expected with an asymmetric conflict. Staff and budgetary realities
limits consistent monitoring of recreation conditions, and product shift hinders managers’
ability to detect changes in experience quality over time. For these reasons, manager
perceptions do not necessarily indicate that boater-miner conflicts are inconsequential.
There is a good probability that some level of conflict will occur when boaters,
hikers or other non-motorized recreationists encounter a recreational suction dredge
miner. Because of the disproportionate effects that one miner can have on other
recreationists, such conflicts may increase if current trends of rapid growth in recreational
rafting and kayaking continue, even if mining itself does not grow.
Socioeconomics
One additional item to be briefly mentioned involves socioeconomic impacts of
recreational mining. Oregon mining organizations have suggested that one of the impacts
of recreational mining is significant economic activity in particular parts of the state.
This was discussed earlier in this report, and while this claim is often made, there is no
solidly reliable data available to say with certainty what the economic impact of
recreational placer mining is in the state of Oregon. As mentioned previously, a 1994
State of California environmental impact report on suction dredging estimated that a
typical dredger spends around $9,000 per person per year on equipment, gasoline, repairs
and maintenance, motels, groceries and restaurants, other forms of recreation and
occasionally on medical services. The Waldo Mining District in southwest Oregon
surveyed its members in 2001, and came up with similar results. These estimates,
however, are not considered to be hard statistical data regarding exactly how much
economic activity recreational placer mining generates for local communities.