SEQUIM — The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is seeking to re-establish an oyster farm that had been decertified because of pollution now that the area has been restored.
The area in Dungeness Bay had been used for oyster farming since before 1953 through a succession of private owners. The tribe purchased the farm in 1990 and operated it until increasing fecal coliform pollution contaminated the water to the point that the tribe closed the farm in 2005.
By 2015, efforts to upgrade septic systems and control stormwater and irrigation outfalls led to the state Department of Health upgrading acreage which included the proposed site from “conditionally approved” to “approved.”
“It’s taken us 10 to 12 years in working with the county, the Department of Ecology and other parties who helped us correct the problem,” Ron Allen, tribal chairman and CEO, said then.
That year, the tribe began exploring permit requirements to restart shellfish operations on the land it leased form the Department of Natural Resources.
“When we first began in the ‘90s, we didn’t need a permit,” Elizabeth Tobin, shellfish program manager with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, noted in a September 2021 newsletter. “The lease with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was in holdover status for shellfish harvesting. But when we began discussions in 2015, the permit requirements had changed.”
To extend its lease, the tribe had to obtain a series of permits that included a Shoreline Use Permit, state Ecology Coastal Zone Consistency and Section 401 Water Quality Certification permits, and a federal permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“The Tribe agreed to a lot of mitigation and monitoring, in order to show that our small farm (34 acres) would not adversely impact aquatic plants or animals,” Tobin wrote.
“This was of major concern to local environmentalists and the staff at the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge” which is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
According to the tribe’s newsletter: “It is always the Tribe’s intention to be stewards of the land and sea, and our practices are designed to have minimal impact. Although monitoring is costly and time consuming, it not only gives the public data to set their minds at ease, it provides the Tribe with a feedback loop through which we can improve our methods.”
In January 2020, county hearings examiner Andrew M. Reeves approved the first phase of the project, a 5-acre area of on-bottom bag cultivation at a maximum commercial bag density of 4,000 bags per acre, as well as on-bottom beach harvest of mature oysters.
Reeves, however, declined to allow for the tribe to expand to Phase 2 — which would increase cultivation to 10 acres — or into Phase 3, which would increase cultivation to up to 20 acres in rotation over the 34-acre project site, using a maximum of 80,000 bags.
“There is insufficient current data … to fully assess long-term impacts from this type of operation, especially in relation to the Refuge,” Reeves wrote.
“Thus, limiting approval to Phase 1 alone, at this time, is warranted. In addition, conditions are necessary to mitigate specific impacts of Phase 1 of the proposal, including conditions ensuring that ongoing monitoring of impacts of the proposal, especially in relation to the Refuge, occur.”
Moving to Phase 2 would take years, Tobin noted in an email this week.
“Additional site-specific data collection is required to assess potential impacts from the Phase 1 operations which has been incorporated into the permit conditions as part of the tribe’s commitment to scientific monitoring,” she wrote.
Based on the hearing examiner’s February 2020 decision, Tobin said, the tribe can request after two to five years of operations that the hearing be re-opened to evaluate Phase 1, and determine whether it’s appropriate for additional phases of the project to be approved.
In March 2021, Ecology approved its permit for the oyster aquaculture project, with 12 conditions. Among them were that the tribe must submit annual monitoring reports of eelgrass areas to the county DCD and state Department of Ecology for review and approval, and annual inspection of bags — and replacement, as necessary — of any bags showing deterioration.
In September 2021, DNR approved the land lease for the proposed oyster farm within the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge — one of the key final hurdles in the approval process.
