PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County commissioners have approved a second six-month moratorium on any new boat mooring buoys in Mystery Bay in an effort to manage protection of the shellfish-rich bay at Marrowstone Island.
“There’s a lot of sensitivity to the shellfish growers, including private and tribal,” Al Scalf, county Department of Community Development director, told the three commissioners before they voted unanimously Monday for the moratorium extension.
Scalf said the board would schedule a public hearing on the moratorium within the next 60 days.
The moratorium is part of an agreement with the state Department of Ecology, Department of Natural Resources and Department of Health to protect and maintain commercial shellfish growing along Mystery Bay’s shores on Marrowstone Island. It will continue, the result of a plan to reduce the number of boats mooring in the area.
The collaborative agreement among government agencies, tribes, shellfish growers and local residents was reached in late March.
The commercial shellfish site on Mystery Bay has long been a major source of revenue in Jefferson County and Puget Sound.
Healthy environment
The plan agreed to was developed to ensure a healthy aquatic environment and help keep shellfish sites working by balancing the diverse uses in the bay while protecting Puget Sound, officials have said.
The state Department of Health over the past two years had been considering limiting or prohibiting commercial shellfish operations in the area because the number and location of unauthorized boats and mooring buoys in the bay exceeded national safety standards for a commercial shellfish growing area.
The National Shellfish Sanitation Program standards are designed to prevent contamination of shellfish that could harm human health.
An excessive number of boats — 10 or more — mooring in an area can produce enough sewage or other discharge to contaminate shellfish.
As the steward and lease managers of state-owned aquatic lands, including portions of the commercial shellfish beds in Mystery Bay, DNR began meeting with stakeholders in 2008 to find a workable and sustainable solution to keep the shellfish site open after concerns were raised by the state health department.
The outer bay was closed last summer to commercial shellfish harvest, outside a line between Griffith Point and Mystery Bay State Park, but the inner bay was left open.
Seven mooring buoys removed last year, six of them in the inner bay and one on the outer bay.
The result of the effort is the Mystery Bay management plan, which is intended to help resolve conflicts within the bay between boaters and shellfish harvesters.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.