Sequim Gazette: Concerns over oyster farm

Concerns remain over tribe’s oyster farm in Dungeness Bay

By Michael Dashiell, Sequim Gazette • February 2, 2022 1:30 am

A proposal from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to reestablish oyster farming in Dungeness Bay is undergoing a third-party review to address the monitoring of shorebirds and waterfowl — and how impacts of the farming project will be monitored — as the tribe looks to begin construction of its long-awaited aquaculture project.

Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc. contracted with Clallam County Department of Community Development to conduct the review of the Avian Monitoring Plan for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s Dungeness Bay Oyster Farm, a project that by a third phase could see as many as 80,000 bags placed on the bottom of a 34-acre site within Dungeness Bay.

Elizabeth Tobin, shellfish program manager with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, said the consultant, West EcoSystems Technology, Inc., completed the review but that the tribe has not yet received a final report, or any required or recommended revisions to the avian monitoring methods.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has finalized the existing monitoring plan, the county needs to provide final approval of the Avian Monitoring Plan before the tribe can begin Phase 1 operations, Tobin said. (Phase 1 allows for a 5-acre area of on-bottom bag cultivation at a maximum commercial bag density of 4,000 bags per acre.)

In a technical memorandum to DCD director Mary Ellen Winborn and DCD senior planner Greg Ballard on Jan. 7, consultants from West EcoSystems Technology, Inc., described the scope of the plan that includes “adaptive management measures to respond to any identified adverse responses of shorebirds and waterfowl to operations. The inclusion of an adaptive management plan into the Plan minimizes the potential for repeated adverse responses to birds.”

Despite establishment of the plan, citizens and community groups continue to have concerns about multiple aspects of the proposed oyster farm project, however.

Local environmentalist Darlene Schanfeld said three major concerns she sees remain: loss of bird feeding and rearing grounds, introduction of plastics into the marine ecosystem and animals, and impacts to the eelgrass beds.

“Aquaculture is polluting, period,” Schafeld said. “Bottomlands get wrecked, poisons get spewed around.”

State lawmakers is developing legislation protecting these beds, she notes, with House Bill 1661 (“Conserving and restoring kelp forests and eelgrass meadows in Washington state”).

“The permitting governments for the oyster operation seemed to have ignored this legislation,” she said.

Schanfeld noted all of the money being spent to clean up Puget Sound — funds that in her view are being wasted by allowing aquaculture projects.

“You can’t clean up Puget Sound if you’re putting out shelfish farms and net pens,” she said.

To read more go to: https://www.sequimgazette.com/news/concerns-remain-over-tribes-oyster-farm-in-dungeness-bay/