Jan 17

Written by:
1/17/2012 11:40 AM 

Prospectors forge alliance to battle assault on mining

The Western Mining Alliance has summoned miners and prospectors to a meeting to lay out the background and battle plan of how to organize independent miners and prospectors in California to overturn regulations that are strangling the small-scale and commerical mining community. The meeting, will be held following the regular Shasta Prospectors Club meeting in Redding on Wednesday, Jan 18 at 8 p.m. at Moose Hall, 320 Lake St.

“If you want to be a part of the solution, you need to be there. we need lots of people to participatem, if we want to turn thius around,” said Big Bob Fredlund, a long time Gold Prospectors Association of America and Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association member.

"On Friday, I talked with the State Mineral Officer of a nearby state and he told me that all the big mining companies have written off California. No one is planning on trying to open anything in California. And, he said, the only thing that is going to turn that around is a grassroots movement. We have a lot of miners and prospectors in California and so far, no one has seen what a group of this size in an organized manner can do," Fredlund said.