WDFW Changes Meeting Plans Regarding New Prospecting Rules

Information just received is that WDFW has canceled the June 2 meeting with the Mineral Prospecting Workgroup to discuss proposed changes to the rules. According to WDFW:

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided NOT to pursue any changes to the mineral prospecting rules at this time. Therefore, the meeting of the mineral prospecting workgroup that was scheduled for June 2 is CANCELLED. Please remove that meeting from your calendar.

Instead, WDFW plans to meet with the prospector representatives of the workgroup at the time originally scheduled for the now canceled meeting. The stated purpose of this new meeting is to discuss WDFW's future mineral prospecting rule-making plans and how those plans may relate to their "efforts to obtain a Habitat Conservation Plan for the Hydraulic Program under the Endangered Species Act."

Washington State Miner is following this story and will report more information as it becomes available.

WDFW: Changing the Rules in the Middle of the Game?

It appears that WDFW is undertaking to amend the mineral prospecting rules that went into effect only last year. And it further appears that they have been doing so intentionally under the radar of the small-scale prospecting and mining community.

This information comes from a somewhat widely shared email from Bill Thomas of the Resources Coalition dated May 17, 2010. Here is a summary of the situation quoted from the email:

• WDFW has been meeting with NMFS and USFWS bi-weekly Since December revising the rules
• WDFW filed the CR-101 (intent to conduct rule making) on Feb 23, 2010
• A set of the proposed changes as of 1/27/10 can be seen in document -010. There are some absurd changes being proposed, Looks like the 1999 Green book all over again and changing dates on some streams and making some "submit application".
• WDFW has scheduled a meeting for members of the Mineral Prospecting Rules Development Work Group for June 2, 2010. They plan on telling what the changes will be & why. They MAY take some of our comments, then File the CR-102 which will identify the proposed rules and open public comment.
• WDFW Director has suggested that the Commission ADOPT the rules the same day as they hear public testimony. Given the time requirements for public comments after filing of the CR-102, the earliest this can happen is August.

Were they implemented,the proposed changes to the rules appearing in the document linked in the third bullet-point above would seriously impair the ability of small-scale prospectors and miners to carry out exploration and development work along state watercourses. To counter the adoption of these new rules, Bill Thomas advocates contacting our legislators. To facilitate this undertaking, he has provided a sample letter together with supporting documentation which can be copied, pasted, and adapted by each individual to suit their own needs. This document, which is in .doc format and can be opened and modified with any text editor, is quite educational reading in its own right. The link to it is here.

If you need help identifying your Washington State legislators, please visit the link here and fill in your address information in the boxes at the top of the page. Contacting our legislators needs to happen sooner rather than later as WDFW seems to have put this revision effort on the fast track.