Our mission is to protect the habitat of Puget Sound tidelands from the underregulated expansion of new and intensive shellfish aquaculture methods. These methods were never anticipated when the Shoreline Management Act was passed. They are transforming the natural tideland ecosystems in Puget Sound and are resulting in a fractured shoreline habitat. In South Puget Sound much of this has been done with few if any meaningful shoreline permits and with limited public input. It is exactly what the Shoreline Management Act was intended to prevent.

Get involved and contact your elected officials to let them you do not support aquaculture's industrial transformation of Puget Sound's tidelands.

Governor Inslee:

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Shellfish Initiative: Money Spent on Jobs for Who?


Streamlining permitting and the multiple millions of dollars being spent through NOAA and the Governor's "Shellfish Initiative" were promoted in December as a way to get the unemployed in rural counties back to work with "family wage jobs." 

In February the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association, based in Olympia, was in Washington DC telling Congress:

"The current domestic workforce is not able to provide sufficient qualified workers for the shellfish industry." 

They went on to say, "Among Washington shellfish growers, I-9 audits confirmed that employers were complying with the law, however many of these employers were directed to terminate large numbers of workers who proved to be not work authorized."  (i.e., the foreign workers did not have the proper documentation)

Spending millions of dollars to create jobs which only migrant workers are interested in is something taxpayers should question.

 
Posted by Protect Our Shoreline at 2:50 PM

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