Willapa Bay Oyster Growers to the Public: You've been eating oysters sprayed with pesticides for 50 years. If you don't let us continue, we'll sue you!

Is it time to stop buying oysters

grown in Willapa Bay?

Now you tell me?
With help from their public relations firms and attorneys, Willapa Bay oyster growers are now letting consumers of oysters grown in Willapa Bay know they have been eating oysters which have been filtering pesticides they have been spraying Willapa Bay with for decades. As reported in the PI:

For 50 years, growers sprayed large quantities of the pesticide carbaryl onto tidelands

You don't like to consume oysters grown in waters sprayed with pesticides? We'll sue you and force you to like them! 
It is now being reported that if the Department of Ecology does not re-issue the permit, which the shellfish growers themselves asked to be withdrawn last May, they may sue. ("In a letter Friday that may presage a lawsuit, Willapa/Grays Harbor Oyster Growers Association attorney Douglas Steding said his clients face a dramatic loss to their livelihoods if they can’t spray the tidelands soon.")
Lost on the shellfish growers is that threat alone may very well cause them more economic harm than changing their growing methods. As noted in the article, alternative methods are being used:

Hanging oyster baskets and platforms aren’t impacted by the burrowing shrimp.

Time to read your local paper and move on, not spend money threatening frivolous law suits or creating strained "public relation" events.
After the growers asked the permit to spray imidacloprid be withdrawn, the Chinook Observer wrote an article about how the shellfish industry needed to change. In that article, they reminded the shellfish growers of their responses to the over harvesting of Olympia oysters and the die-off of Eastern oysters, which they had thought would replace the native species. They wrote:

This weekend’s sudden collapse of a long-made plan to use the pesticide imidacloprid to kill burrowing shrimp could be one of the landmark events in the industrial history of the bay, perhaps on par with the decimation of native Shoalwater oysters in the late 19th century and the systemic failure of introduced Eastern oysters a couple decades later. These were grim events, both in terms of personal finances and the ecosystem of the bay, with causes and effects too complex to easily encapsulate here. But, importantly, the overall industry eventually did find ways to move forward. Despite difficulties now and then, the Pacific oysters brought from Japan starting in 1902 have made Washington’s industry the largest in the U.S.

If Taylor Shellfish can do it so can you.
Taylor Shellfish has stated they understand consumers do not want oysters grown in waters sprayed with imidacloprid so will not do it. Instead, they will use alternative growing methods. As written in the Seattle Times, May 2:

After receiving calls, emails and social-media comments from customers all day Friday, Washington’s largest shellfish producer [Taylor Shellfish] has announced it will not treat its oyster beds with a controversial pesticide [imidacloprid].