Clallam to work with tribe on oyster survey

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 27, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Clallam County will once again work with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to complete an annual Olympia oyster population survey.

The work, approved by the Clallam County commissioners on Tuesday, is on a shared restoration project on Sequim Bay.

“This is a renewal of a multi-year collaboration that’s been going on between multiple parties,” county Administrator Todd Mielke said. “This is a contract between the Clallam County Marine Resources Committee and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.”

The contract for $2,437 will pay to coordinate the field days, collect data and train new data collectors and analyze results, according to county documents.

The scope of the project is to monitor growth and survival of the Olympia oyster restoration efforts at the two locations in Sequim Bay through the performance of two population surveys, according to county documents.

The contract with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe was one of three commissioners approved Tuesday.

The second was a memorandum of agreement with the Washington State University Extension office.

“This is the annual formulation of the long-standing relationship between Clallam County and the Washington State University Extension,” Mielke said. “Specifically, it covers not only a contribution to their director costs and department head services, but it also supports the 4-H program, the community health program in waste reduction as well as the Master Gardener program.”

The agreement is for one year.

“I just wanted to note that I continue to see this as a highly beneficial partnership between the county and WSU Extension,” Commissioner Mark Ozias said.

The final contract commissioners approved was between the county’s Health and Human Services Department and the Port Angeles Fire Department.

“(This) is a community paramedics program for a period of two years,” Mielke said. “It partners with not only the fire department but fire districts 2 and 4 as well as Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.”

The contract is to maintain two autonomous response units over an area of 170 square miles.

“Those units basically do a field-based treatment,” Mielke said. “They provide prevention education, harm reduction and ensure residents receive crisis treatment timely.”

The contract is effective from Jan. 1, 2026, through Dec. 31, 2027, and costs $348,080.43.

“I just wanted to say how pleased I am to see this program expanding,” Ozias said. “I think this is a really key and very impactful program.”

Ozias noted the commissioners have heard a lot of negative feedback about the harm reduction program and said the program is an organization that works with the harm reduction program.

“That certainly deserves a lot of credit for some of the success that we’ve seen and the reduction of overdose deaths,” he said. “We still have more work to do, obviously, but partnerships like this are a key component of the county’s overall suite of strategies.”

Commissioner Mike French added that the Port Angeles Fire Department partners with the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic for the ReDiscovery program.

“One thing that I have heard our fire chief talk about is, before a lot of these programs existed, the fire department was still responding,” French said. “They were still having these interactions with people that were making terrible life choices and were harming themselves and were harming the community.”

Many times, those people left medical treatment against the advice of providers, and that created a lot of frustration and burnout for first responders, French said.

“So finding the right partners, finding the right way to do work that turns that really frustrating negative, and, frankly, useless experience into something that is productive, that changes someone’s life, that saves someone’s life, that sets them on a path to a different life, I think, is a big deal,” French said.

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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.