Parks And Recreation Commission OKs Small Scale Beach Mining

As reported previously on this blog (here, here, here, here and here), on March 20, 2008 SSB 6343 was signed into law requiring the State Parks and Recreation Commission and the Department of Fish and Wildlife to establish a pilot program to allow small scale prospecting and mining on Washington's ocean beaches beginning July 1, 2008.

According to a document released by the Parks and Recreation Commission describing their meeting of November 19, 2010, based on the results of the pilot program, "Parks staff is open to continuing to allow the activity (beach mining)." But before you grab your gear and head for the beaches, remember that SSB 6343 only set up a short-term exemption to the prohibition in RCW 79A.05.165 that makes beach mining unlawful and that the exemption expires on December 1, 2010.

At this point, miners need to wait for the rule making process to be completed which, according to informed sources, could occur by April 29, 2011.

Those who wish to read the November 19 meeting notes of the Parks and Recreation Commission will find the document at the following link:

http://www.parks.wa.gov/agency/commissionmeetings/2010-11-19%20detailed%20Commission%20agenda%20items.doc

The section concerning beach mining is titled "Item E-16: Findings on Small Scale Mineral Prospecting Pilot Program -- Report" and starts on the bottom half of page 32 of the 34 page document.

The Washington State Miner will continue to report on this story as it develops.

Note: The November 19 meeting document linked above is a MS-Word document which can be opened with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Word Viewer (available free from Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=3657ce88-7cfa-457a-9aec-f4f827f20cac&displaylang=en&pf=true), or with Open Office (available free at http://www.openoffice.org/). For those who do not have any of these applications but who have a .pdf reader such as Adobe Reader, I have created a .pdf version of the meeting document which is available at the link here: http://www.box.net/shared/37pnq4mjkt.