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<\/a><\/p>\nOn Monday, May 19, 2025, the 2024-2025 Calaveras County Civil Grand Jury published the report entitled \u201cAre We Running Out of Rock?\u201d examining how the County has been addressing its mining concerns in recent years. The report focuses on three areas of interest: the administration of surface mining operations in compliance with California\u2019s Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975 (SMARA), mineral resource management, and abandoned mines.<\/p>\n
Among the Civil Grand Jury\u2019s findings:
\n\u2022 Calaveras County\u2019s Planning Department does not regularly report surface mine inspection results to the Board of Supervisors, which as the lead agency under SMARA has ultimate authority over the operation of mining in Calaveras, including the issuing of financial penalties for violations.
\n\u2022 The Planning Department charges surface mining operators a flat fee for annual inspections that has not increased in years, meaning the County has not been compensated for the actual time and material costs of inspections.
\n\u2022 The County has not conducted a thorough review of its existing permitted supply of sand, gravel, and aggregate, which could impact the future availability of these minerals as the County\u2019s population and development needs increase.
\n\u2022 The County does not maintain a current map of abandoned mines within its jurisdiction, despite hundreds of these potentially hazardous sites located throughout Calaveras.<\/p>\n
The recommendations presented in the report are intended to improve overall surface mining administration and mineral resources management to ensure Calaveras County can fulfill its mineral needs for decades to come.<\/p>\n
The report, in its entirety, can be found on the Calaveras County Civil Grand Jury website: https:\/\/grandjury.calaverasgov.us\/.<\/p>\n
The Superior Court of Calaveras County annually appoints 19 county residents as Civil Grand Jurors to serve as citizen watchdogs over local government. The Civil Grand Jury encourages the public to share concerns about county, municipal, school, and special-district operations by writing to Calaveras County Civil Grand Jury, 891 Mountain Ranch Road, San Andreas, CA 95249.<\/p>\n
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San Andreas, CA…Calaveras County has a rich mining heritage dating back to the Gold Rush of the 1850s, though today its mines primarily produce sand, gravel, and aggregate, materials which are used in the construction of homes, businesses, and infrastructure projects throughout the County. On Monday, May 19, 2025, the 2024-2025 Calaveras County Civil Grand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,16,1,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-law-enforcement","category-news","category-san-andreas","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/gavel25.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191585,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583\/revisions\/191585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/191584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}