Hi Christopher

This is to bad, hate to see it. If it is county land then it is considered private land not public land. If you want to change it you would have to petition the county for a change. I do not know the procedure or remidies for changing county ordinances but that is the key to know those. May want to check out the power of petition route to getting it on the county ballot if it is even possible.

We had club members at every meeting to give info and demonstrations.  Of course the environmentalists and bunny huggers on the advisory committee were not entirely truthful.  One statement was we are killing microbes in the stream and another was the horror stories of backhoes and heavy equipment.  Only hand tools are allowed by the state.  No motors.  One of their own board members even said they were overstepping their bounds.  (He was shut down immediately).  I'm not sure, but I believe it includes metal detecting, superseding their previous rules on detecting. We haven't given up yet, but it looks pretty dim.

The killing of microbes has some truth to it although there have been studies showing that the aeration of the gravels far out weighs the microbe lose and that somewhere in the area of 98 % of microbe recovery within 14 days. Equipment sizes can be regulated within the same laws they are dealing with. The agency that covers in river and out of river may not be the same, this would be something else to look at although if it is county land they may have authority for what they want to proceed with. You may want to look at some of the land rights sights in the west to see what studies they have used. http://plp2.org/  or http://www.goldgold.com/l...itical-affairs  or  http://westernminingalliance.org/

hope this helps