The long-awaited appeal of the Industrial Geoduck Farm in Burley Lagoon ended on May 29. Taylor Shellfish Company proposed a 28-acre aquaculture project — the largest in Pierce County.
Taylor Shellfish faces an uphill battle for the county’s Conditional Use Permit that has been challenged by Friends of Burley Lagoon and a coalition of environmental groups in Pierce County. In 2019, a federal court decision called for the revocation of 900 geoduck aquaculture permits in the state. It also required that all new permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers or by Department of Ecology include a Cumulative Impact Analysis.
After revoking the geoduck permits in Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the Army Corps then resumed handing out over 600 permits without providing the required environmental review and analysis.
The Army Corps initially produced a Nationwide Permit 48 with their permits. This NWP-48 permit created an exception to allow aquaculture companies to grade, plant and harvest on the shoreline in a way that destroyed the benthic community, disturbed endangered birds and forage fish habitat and harmed Chinook salmon, an endangered species in Burley Lagoon and the South Puget Sound.
The NWP-48 permit was revoked in October 2023, leaving Taylor Shellfish and other permit holders without an exception that allowed them to pollute the waters of the state under the Federal Clean Water Act.
Friends of Burley Lagoon and two other groups worked together and challenged the state priority given to aquaculture by the Army Corps, State Ecology Department and several county planning departments when handing out permits. The “priority for aquaculture” allowed shellfish companies to not meet the requirements of the state’s Shoreline Management Act. The Burley Lagoon appeal of Pierce County’s Conditional Use Permit was one of the first opportunities to ask for enforcement of the Federal Court Decision that called for Cumulative Impact Analysis for all new permits since 2019.
The Center for Food Safety and The Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat played a key role in obtaining the federal decision. Since then, they have only been able to file appeals on only a few of the over 600 permits approved by the Army Corps. Each appeal of 10 permits takes time to get on the Federal Court roster and to present their case.
Opponents of the spread of Industrial Aquaculture hope that this Burley Lagoon hearing might just be the tipping point to turn the tide against the state Department of Ecology and county planning departments, forcing them to recognize the damage done to the beaches and shoreline by planting and harvesting activities.
During the Pierce County hearings, the biggest impact that witnesses discussed was the loss of recreation and the disturbance by harvesting in the middle of the night. The harvesters use lights and make noise that disturbs many residents during their sleep. These operations have turned the lagoon, a state Shoreline of Significance, into an industrial zone.
Already the Department of Natural Resources is surveying the loss of eelgrass statewide, and is planning a restoration program. Furthermore, a recent state Court Of Appeals decision has made it possible to challenge the previous “Peference for Aquaculture” that gave Industrial aquaculture permission to damage shoreline habitats for Pacific salmon, as well as forage fish and eelgrass.
The state “Preference for Aquaculture” allowed permit holders to avoid mitigation that is required by the the Shoreline Management Act. It allowed degradation of beaches when the geoduck industry put 450 plastic pipes per acre in the beach,
Three members of the Environmental Coalition of Pierce County joined with 12 other witnesses from the Friends of Burley Lagoon when the public hearing began on May 21.This same team from the Environmental Coalition joined 40 other people earlier this year when they asked the Gig Harbor Land Use Advisory Board to deny the permit. The Gig Harbor Land Use Advisory Board indeed voted to deny the permit.
Unfortunately, this May 2024 hearing is only the beginning of a three-step process of appeals to appear before the state Court of Appeals with a request for Pierce County to abide by the 2019 Seattle Federal Court Decision that required a Cumulative Impact Analysis for all new permits.
At the Burley Lagoon hearing last week, the county appeal centered on asking the Hearing Examiner to require the county planning staff to abide by the Federal Court ruling and perform a Cumulative Impact Analysis ofthe South Puget Sound and determine if a 28+ acre geoduck farm would have a “significant” impact on South Puget Sound.