Small-scale miners and prospectors want an advisory committee to work on environmental rules.
A half-dozen small-scale miners testified Wednesday in favor of a bill to create a mining and prospecting advisory committee to work with the Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission. The bill sponsored by Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, recently won Senate approval and is now before the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee.
The prospectors said that Washington's small-scale mining community has only about 2,500 people and no lobbyist to keep tabs of proposed new state laws and regulations that might affect them. "We often find ourselves at the end of the stick, catching up on what is going on," said Mark Erickson, a former president of the Resource Coalition, a group of small-scale miners.
Prospector Bert Swift said miners have had very little voice in state regulations on mining.
Dawn Vyvyan, representing the Yakama Indian Nation, said that tribes and other interests don't have a separate committee to provide input on small-scale mining regulations. "Gold miners have participated in rule-making in the past,” Vyvyan said. “I have questions on why we spend state time and energy for a group already in the process."
