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:

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Neurotoxin Imidacloprid On Oysters Is Back: Welcome to Washington Shellfish Week

Update 6/29: Washington's Secretary of State lists who the "Governing Members" of the Willapa-Grays Harbor Oyster Growers Association are. Included in that list are employees associated with the various companies listed below. When the SOS records indicate representative members are no longer listed an update of who supports the application of imidacloprid on shellfish beds in Willapa Bay will be put out. Until then the list below will remain.
(see https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601866134 for who Governing Members are)
Note: For help in removing people listed as "Governing Members" of WGHOGA contact the Secretary of State at 360-725-0377.

Is this how you want
your oyster treated?

Like a Thanksgiving ham, they won't go away.
While Governor Inslee and shellfish lobbyists celebrate "Washington Shellfish Week", a group of shellfish growers making up the Willapa-Grays Harbor Oyster Growers Association (WGHOGA) has resurrected their application to apply the neurotoxic pesticide imidacloprid onto shellfish beds in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. (see list of member companies at the end of this post)

No need for scoping. Aren't you happy?


DOE says no scoping needed for this examination.
As part of the process, the Department of Ecology has issued a new SEPA determination of significance. The Department of Ecology has chosen to adopt the old Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and issue a Supplemental EIS (SEIS). So doing gives DOE the discretion to ask for another scoping period in which public comments help determine what the SEIS will consider. Or the discretion not to, which they have done, thereby avoiding that portion of the public process, leaving it to DOE to determine what it will consider.

How can shellfish growers say
they are advocates for clean water
then propose spraying pesticides?
"If you lose Willapa Bay,
it's of both state and national significance,"
Kim Patten, 2003

Current studies of imidacloprid matter - it's a marine ecosystem, not a terrestrial farm.
The old EIS, drafted in 2014 and adopted in 2015 has listed in its footnotes studies dating up to 2013, with the majority falling far earlier. Since 2013 there has been a large body of evidence showing the impacts of imidacloprid and other neonictinoid pesticides to be far more significant than earlier believed. DOE notes in its SEPA determination it will consider "2014 efficacy results from WGHOGA" in the SEIS. Let's hope they consider more than what WGHOGA wants them to read.

Make a difference - don't buy oysters
from those who belong to this group
who wants to spray pesticides
in Willapa Bay.

What's that merroir your oyster has really from? Better ask before you buy.
Listed below are the shellfish companies who have employees listed as "Governing Persons" on Washington's corporate website. Let them know you'll be buying oysters from other growers, those growers who are truly concerned about clean waters and not higher profits.

Brady's Oysters (Mark Ballow, co-owner of Brady's and Director of WGHOGA)
Bay Center Mariculture Co 
Coast Seafoods 
Ekone Oyster Company (Nick Jambor, President/Treasurer of Ekone and vice-president of WGHOGA)
Goose Point/Nisbet Oysters
Heckes Clams (corrected)
Herrold Fish and Oyster Company
Northern Oyster Company 
Stony Point Oyster Co (Don Gillies, manager of Stony Point Oyster, Director of WGHOGA, past president)
Taylor Shellfish 
Wiegardt Brothers Inc 
Willapa Bay Shelfish Inc



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