Gold Dredger Between Rock and Hard Place : Environment: Weekend prospector may have to bow to concerns about noise and a rare toad. He cites a California tradition.

A place called Hardluck seems an ill-fated spot to look for gold. But the name only encourages Jeff Miller of Camarillo.

When and if his permits come through, Miller plans to haul his 400-pound dredge up to a scenic location in Piru Creek in the Los Padres National Forest.

There, in the rugged northeast corner of Ventura County, Miller wants to fire up the machine to pull sand and rock from the creek bottom and pan out his pile of gold.

“I don’t expect to ever hit the big one,” Miller said. “But my chances are much better dredging for gold than they are playing the lottery.”

But Miller may run into more bad fortune than he counts on at Hardluck.

The Los Angeles regional office of the California Department of Fish and Game has recommended an emergency halt to all dredging operations in Piru Creek to protect a rare toad, its tadpoles and its eggs from being sucked into the machines and ground to bits.

In addition, the Sierra Club objects to the dredging because, members say, the machines disrupt nearby campers’ peace of mind, the stream bed and wildlife that lives in or drinks from the creek.

“Camping next to a dredge is like camping in a gravel pit or a rock quarry,” said Alan Coles, who heads a Sierra Club committee on Los Padres forest. “It’s just not the atmosphere you wanted when you went camping.”

U.S. Forest Service officials, however, say a dredge, even a larger eight-horsepower machine such as the one Miller wants to use, won’t change the noise level much.

“One more dredge out there isn’t going to make any difference,” said Judy Adams, minerals and lands manager for Los Padres National Forest. “The 1872 mining law allows reasonable development of minerals on federal land. So as long as what the applicant proposes is reasonable, we really don’t have the authority to say no.”

Both Fish and Game and Forest Service permits are required for Miller to dredge the stream, but no permits are necessary to use a pan to sift for gold. Adams said she will compile an analysis of possible environmental damage before the district ranger makes a decision in the next several months.

As a weekend prospector, Miller would join four or five others in the same area of Piru Creek, many others in the Ventura County backcountry and thousands of amateur miners statewide, officials say.

Miller, an engineer who works for the Navy at Point Mugu, proposes to drill seven holes in the stream bed and remove no more than five cubic yards from each hole. Six cubic yards of dirt would fill the bed of a pickup truck. Miller and seven partners hold claim to the mineral rights to about 160 acres in the area, Forest Service officials said.

The dredge, which reaches bedrock, pulls up sand and rocks from the stream bed. It sifts through the material and separates out the metals. The remaining rock and sand are spit out the back and returned to the stream.

Miller acknowledges that his dredge would be larger than others in Piru Creek. He also agrees that the machinery is loud. But, he said, there already are plenty of other disturbances in the area.

Piru Creek and Hardluck Campground, a hilly area covered with golden grass, cottonwoods and scrub oaks just north of Pyramid Lake a few miles from Interstate 5, are next door to the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Area, which caters to all-terrain vehicles equipped with small motorcycle engines.

“There is a continuous parade that comes through the campground,” Miller said. “If people are looking for peace and quiet, they need to find another campground.”

In any case, he said he is willing to attach a muffler to his dredge, especially since his wife complains about the noise when she goes with him on his mining trips.

A smaller dredge operated by one of Miller’s partners last weekend was about as loud as a lawn mower, enough to drown out the running creek and prohibit conversation below a shout.

On that day, Miller’s partner, Barry Leighlitner, who also works at Point Mugu, strapped his dredge to his back to carry it into the creek. But Miller wants permission to drive his all-terrain vehicle with a specially equipped trailer to haul his heavier dredge up to the site.

As for the fish, Miller said they like him and his contraption.

“When I’m dredging I look behind me and the trout just love it,” he said. “I’m stirring up a lot of sediment for them, and they’re right there gobbling up a storm.”

But Fish and Game officials said the judgment of whether the dredge is good for the fish and the stream bed would be better left to professionals.

The arroyo southwestern toad, now listed by the state as a “species of special concern,” lives and breeds in Piru Creek near Hardluck Campground, said Fred Worthley, regional manager of the Fish and Game regional office in Los Angeles.

“If the area is not closed, the dredging for gold which now occurs will have a serious adverse impact to the survival of the toad’s tadpoles and egg masses and will further threaten their existence in Southern California,” Worthley wrote in a letter to the director of the department.

The department has additional concerns about disruption to the fish and the stream habitat.

The toad and the fish notwithstanding, Miller said looking for gold is a tradition in Ventura County and California as a whole.

“It’s our state’s heritage,” he said, referring to the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s.

Indeed, prospectors have mined Piru Creek and the county’s backcountry since the 1840s, said E. R. (Jim) Blakley, a Santa Barbara historian and member of the Los Padres Interpretive Society.

As the story goes, Francisco Lopez and two other men were out working the cattle herds when they paused to rest along Piru Creek. Digging up some wild onions for a snack, they found a gold nugget attached to a root.

“And that set off a little gold rush,” Blakley said. Interest continued for the next 50 years, he added. “There has been mining off and on, but never very profitably and never on a large scale.”

That is not to say the gold has all been mined from the hills.

“There is gold out there,” he said. “But the veins are thin and small.”

On the other hand, there is plenty of gold left in the hills and mountains of Northern California, said John Rapp, senior geologist at the state division of mines and geology.

“We’re not even close to mining it all,” he said. In fact, gold production in the state has quadrupled in the last five years, making California the second-largest producer in the United States, which ranks third in the world.

The state has 63 active claims that collectively mined $391 million in gold last year, Rapp said.

But the Sierra Club’s Coles said it is a bad trade to degrade the wilderness for the little bit of gold that could be found in Piru Creek.

“If there is anything out there, they would have found it years ago,” Coles said. “The bottom line is that we’re going to chew up a very nice piece of river because of a stupid law.”