Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge: Comments Due April 27, Hearing June 7

Permit SHR2017-00011

Clallam County Shoreline Permit

150,000 Bags of Non-native Pacific Oysters

in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge

By April 27 - Clallam County Comment Form: http://www.clallam.net/features/emailClallam.asp?em=permits&caseid=SHR2017-00011

or,

By April 27 Email contact: Greg Ballard at gballard@co.clallam.wa.us *

(*Ask for an email confirming it was received. If you don’t get one within 24 hours, call Greg Ballard at 360.565.2616.)

June 7, 1PM - Public Hearing

Should portions of the tidelands of the

Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge

be allowed to be transformed

into a commercial aquaculture development

because the water is now cleaner?

Funding Sources

(from: https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/publications/1410041.pdf)

Public dollars fund a restoration.

In 2005 an oyster operation within the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, which had been operating for decades, was abandoned due to water quality issues. Over the next 10 years millions of  taxpayer dollars in the form of grants from the EPA, including matching funds from Washington, was sourced by various groups (see "Funding Sources" above). These taxpayer funded grants were used to determine the source, and remedy the cause, of pollutants within the Dungeness watershed. In December of 2017 the tidelands within the National Wildlife Refuge were considered by the Department of Health to be "Conditionally" approved. 

DOH Classifications 

(from December 2017)

Now what? Clallam County, Army Corps, and the Department of Natural Resources

Currently there are two regulatory agencies, Clallam County and the Army Corps of Engineers, in the permitting process, and the Department of Natural Resources considering a lease. Clallam County had thought a hearing scheduled April 4th would be the end of public input, but the Hearing Examiner felt there was too much information still to be gathered from the public and various agencies before a decision could be made, so granted an extension for the comment period to April 27, to be followed by another Hearing June 7. Having denied qualification for a Nationwide permit, the Army Corps of Engineers is beginning to look at the proposal through their Individual Permitting process. Finally, the Department of Natural Resources is considering a new lease for the operation.

In a National Wildlife Refuge?

150,000 synthetic bags 

growing non-native Pacific oysters?

Lean forward and get involved. It's a National Wildlife Refuge on an easement granted to US Fish and Wildlife from the State for that purpose in 1943. It's 2018 and there's no "elsewhere" to go. 

These tidelands are neither privately held nor Tribal tidelands. The operation was abandoned 12 years ago. Public funds have indeed made the water quality better - the result of a number of groups, including the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe. However, this critical inter-tidal marine habitat is needed now than ever before. Industrial aquaculture is expanding throughout Puget Sound and it is fragmenting the marine habitat.