An environmental group is proposing to take over and hold in trust four sites throughout Puget Sound that have for years been used to farm fish.
The Wild Fish Conservancy announced earlier this month that under a proposal it has submitted to the state’s Department of Natural Resources, it would pay to take over the net pen sites that have been run by Cooke Aquaculture: in Rich Passage, off Bainbridge Island; near Hope Island in Skagit County; and at former sites in Port Angeles Harbor and in Cypress Island’s Deepwater Bay. The net pens have been used to raise nonnative Atlantic salmon.
In a letter to Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, the head of DNR, earlier this month, Wild Fish Conservancy Executive Director Kurt Beardslee said the group would seek to restore the sites to their natural states and to restore full access for public use, citing risks he said the net pens pose to Puget Sound.
“Leasing these lands for the purpose of restoring Puget Sound is consistent with the will of the public and will provide broad cultural, social, and economic benefits for all citizens while restoring direct access to 130 acres of public waters for the first time in over thirty years,” he wrote.
In an interview with the Kitsap Sun, Beardslee said buying the rights to the sites and removing the pens would, cost-to-benefit-wise, be “one of the best restoration projects I’ve seen in 30 years.”
“We’ve been working on this for a long time looking into what DNR really needs to consider, and we think we have an extremely good case, especially when the biggest part of what needs to be considered is what is in the best interests to the public,” he said. “I think that from every aspect, our proposal completely outweighs the pollution and harm to Puget Sound that Cooke offers.”
Asked about the group's proposal, Cooke Aquaculture Pacific Vice President Joel Richardson said in a statement to the Kitsap Sun that the company questions the motivation behind Wild Fish Conservancy's "sensational antics" and said the advocacy group was using Cooke as a "fundraising foil," asserting that the company's operations "do not have an adverse effect on the environment."
"In order to be successful in acquiring marine farm site leases and approval to raise fish, any company or organization must go through a multi-agency, multi-step permitting process. Cooke Aquaculture Pacific and our partners are following all the government approved steps," he said, referring to plans the company is pursuing to shift to farming steelhead trout in its net pens.
More: After nonnative fish farming ban, Cooke Aquaculture plans a shift in Puget Sound
The company and its floating pens came under scrutiny in the region when in 2017 its Cypress Island facility collapsed, releasing hundreds of thousands of fish into the Salish Sea. The state’s Department of Ecology recently announced that a $332,000 penalty settlement for that incident would go to a habitat restoration project on the Skagit River and to a department fund that gives grants for environmental protection and restoration throughout the state.
Wild Fish Conservancy brought a Clean Water Act lawsuit against the company in U.S. District Court following the Cypress Island incident, and earlier this year a federal judge signed off on a consent decree settlement. For three years, the settlement lines out certain requirements for Cooke's operations in Puget Sound, including $1.15 million in payments the company must make to the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment for environmental projects.
"Mr. Beardslee seems enamored with using Cooke as a fundraising device, despite signing onto a legal settlement with Cooke where Cooke agreed to every one of WFC’s demands," Richardson said. "It is worth noting that Cooke raised the question of partnering with WFC or other environmental organizations on habitat restoration, and other wild fish projects like Cooke participates in worldwide. WFC had no interest in that discussion — highlighting WFC’s desire to use Cooke as a fundraising foil, rather than actually trying to accomplish meaningful change with respect to wild fisheries."
DNR canceled the company’s lease at the Cypress site a few months after the collapse and terminated the lease at the Port Angeles facility, citing issues at that site as well. Leases for pens in Rich Passage and near Hope Island expire in 2022.
Following the collapse of the Cypress facility, lawmakers in 2018 moved to ban nonnative fish farming in state waters. The enacted law prohibited state agencies from allowing nonnative fish farming beyond the expiration of the company's current leases but didn’t address native fish farming. The company has moved toward shifting operations to farming native species at its sites and is pursuing a partnership with the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in Port Angeles.
DNR spokesman Joe Smillie said what happens to leases beyond 2022 is still to be determined and said that the agency has not yet received a formal application for an extension from Cooke.
Wild Fish Conservancy has been a vocal critic of the company in recent years and has advocated for Cooke to shift to farming fish in land-based facilities.
“Industry representatives often claim transitioning to land-based facilities is simply too expensive,” Beardslee wrote in his letter to Franz. “However, under the current business model the net pen aquaculture industry is using the public’s waters and resources to subsidize their expenditures and profits. Moving these facilities out of public waters shifts the responsibility and financial burden of oversight, monitoring, emergency response, and management of effluent and pollution away from the public and onto the company. For that very reason, as long as governments around the world are willing to continue leasing public waters for use by this industry, companies have little incentive to invest and transition to sustainable and ecologically safe alternatives.”
Nathan Pilling is a reporter covering Bainbridge Island, North Kitsap and Washington State Ferries for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-5242, nathan.pilling@kitsapsun.com or on Twitter at @KSNatePilling.
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Environmental group wants to buy the rights to Puget Sound net pen sites - Kitsap Sun
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