Burley Lagoon: Taylor Shellfish Agrees - Not All Farms are Equal, will Perform an EIS

"every farm is different" Taylor Shellfish, April 13, 2015

What took you so long?

 

Trust us, one PVC tube is the same as the next, and the next, and the next ...

For years Taylor Shellfish and others have tried to place all geoduck farms into the same frame, using past separate permit approvals, Shorelines Hearings Board decisions and court decisions to support their applications, implying they are all the same. In permit hearings and court cases they have claimed studies which have looked at discrete farm operations clearly show all farms, no matter the size, no matter the location, have no impact. This despite one of their most widely used studies stating the following qualification after peer review and publication this year:

"...it is cautioned that projection of the current study results to larger temporal or spatial scales may be inappropriate in the absence of additional studies. The sites for the current study were relatively isolated from other geoduck aquaculture plots, and were being used for aquaculture of geoducks for the first time. The data may not provide a sufficient basis for unequivocal extrapolation to cases when a given plot is exposed to a long series of successive geoduck aquaculture cycles. Likewise, it may not be appropriate to extend the findings of the current study to cases when a number of separate plots are adjacent to one another and encompass significantly larger surface areas than any single plot. Resolution of the questions of larger spatial and temporal scales will be a major challenge for geoduck farmers as they continue production on existing plots and expand into new areas, and will be an important research goal in the interests of informed management policies by natural resource agencies." (ECOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF THE HARVEST PHASE OF GEODUCK (PANOPEA GENEROSA GOULD, 1850) AQUACULTURE ON INFAUNAL COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHERN PUGET SOUND, WASHINGTON, Glen Van Blaricom et al, Journal of Shellfish Research, March 2015)

 

 

After quoting the above study untold times, without noting the qualifications, Taylor Shellfish has finally conceded that, in fact, geoduck farms are not all equal. In an April 13, 2015 letter to Pierce County, their attorney Billy Plauche with Plauche and Carr has said Taylor Shellfish will perform an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for its proposed 25 acre geoduck farm in Burley Lagoon. It is not the only one which should be required to have an EIS.

 

Get involved. The people concerned about Burley Lagoon did.