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:

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Ecology Issues 401 Water Quality Certification for Fudge Point Geoduck Farm

On February 28 the Department of Ecology issued its 401 Water Quality Certification to Taylor Shellfish for its proposed geoduck farm in the wetland drainage area of Fudge Point.  The Corps of Engineers is still taking comments on whether the proposed geoduck farm should be issued a 404 Water Quality Certification (the Federal portion of the Clean Water Act).  Comments should be sent to  Pamela Sanguinetti at  Pamela.Sanguinetti@usace.army.mil with NWS-2011-44, Taylor Shellfish in the subject line.

Fudge Point Wetland Drainage Area
(click to enlarge)


Ecology could have chosen to protect this valuable sub-set of the intertidal area but instead issued conflicting conditions. 

Condition 8 states "no surface waters shall be channelized for the purpose of redirecting flows on the project site".

Condition 9 allows for temporary control of surface run-off through the "placing of sandbags to redirect the surface run-off" during times of "high run-off periods" which may threaten the survival of young geoduck.  There is no definition of what "high run-off periods" are nor what "temporary" means. 

Not conditioned at all is erosion during and after the harvest of this area. The wetland drainage will continue to drain, but through sediments which have been liquefied during the harvest period.

If this area is not appropriate for geoduck, why allow it at all?  Isn't the protection of habitat an important part of the Clean Water Act any longer?

Does the loss of this single drainage area mean anything?  The better question to ask is whether the loss of intertidal fresh water drainage areas in Totten Inlet; Spencer Cove; Nisqually Reach; and now Fudge Point combined mean anything.
Posted by Protect Our Shoreline at 4:46 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)