Collection: Directories and Documents > Historical Clippings

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Title: Historical Clippings Book (HC-11) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Historical Clippings Catalog #: HC-11 # of Pages: 314 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Printed or handwritten: Mixed printed/handwritten Date Scanned: 2025-01-07 15:12:13 Scanned By: Erik Caruso Scanning Equipment: CZUR Book Scanner OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.5.0 Item Sourced From: JPGs First Created: 2025-03-17 03:19:14 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:19:14

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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Photos by Michael Bowker Placer Service Corp.'s exploratory drilling site on San Juan Ridge, 15 miles west of Nevada City “We should be looking at what we can put back into the earth, not what we can take out.” That line of thinking runs contrary to the miners’ view of the Jand. ' “We have a perfect right to excavate,” said Peter Ingram, public relations man for the mining company. “This has been and probably always will be a mining area. The few shacks they have out there on the ridge doesn’t change that.” About 100 of the 300 or so ridge dwellers have banded together in the San Juan Taxpayers Association, managing to delay the mining operations for 19 months while they challenged the environmental impact report on the _ project in the courts. But the association’s suit failed, and now the miners have begun exploratory drilling, hoping to find the river of gold that government geologists believe is under the surface of San Juan Ridge. The locals claim that drilling exploratory shafts could release quantities of arsenic into the underground water stream and into the well systems they rely on. “ “Nobody Imows what effect the drilling will have,” said Bruce Boyd, association president. “No ~ studies. of any type have been done.” Speaking for the miners, In-’ gram argued, “Water quality problems were addressed in the environmental impact report, which was reviewed by the state water quality people. Of course, we probably didn’t address it to the satisfaction of the taxpayer group.” The, best Known of all the landowners on the ridge has kept ; Inum on the issue. He is is Governor Brown, who has about two acres near the contested site. The conflict isn’t the first battle between residents and miners in the San Juan Ridge area. A century ago, the hydraulic mining industry, using water to wash down the mountain, sending dirt and gravel through sluice boxes that extracted the gold, ravaged areas known as the Malakoff Diggins and the North Columbia Hill Diggins. A huge amount of mud and gravel, called “slickens,” washed into the Yuba, Bear and upper Feather rivers, making them difficult to navigate and unfit for irrigation. There was the constant threat of flooding. When the mud covered more than 39,000 acres of farmland, the farmers demanded that something be done. The miners were eventually beaten by an 1884 court decision by Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, who ordered an end to hydraulic mining and dumping waste into the water system. ®@.