In Anderson Island versus geoducks, a point for the people

If you want to spark passion on an idyllic South Sound island, say these two words together three times, fast: “Geoduck farm.”

On Friday, Anderson Island Community Improvement Association members filled their meeting hall, ready to fight 2 acres of planted bivalves.

Residents had gotten wind of a Department of Natural Resources plan to use the island’s Treble Point for a geoduck farming study.

In 2003 the Legislature instructed the department to look into whether, and where, it could lease state-owned lands to geoduck farmers. To the state’s credit, it required environmental research first.

By last fall, the department had picked three sites, each about 2 acres, to lease to commercial giant-bivalve farmers. It planned a 10-year study on the impact on the beach, the waters and all the critters passing by or flying over them.

In the wild, native geoducks are as unobtrusive as a mollusk gets. They get by, and get big, by sinking through a yard of sediment, a depth that gives them a fighting chance against ambitious clammers.

In cultivation, for about two years they take over the beach where they’re planted in plastic tubes protected by netting.

Taylor Shellfish Co., with the proposed lease on the Anderson Island beach, generally plants 35,000 plastic tubes per acre. The tubes are 3 feet long, 6 inches across and 18 inches apart. They’re stomped into the muck until about 3 inches remain exposed, then they’re planted with three or four geoduck seeds and covered with a net for about 18 months. At that point, the tubes come out, but the net goes back up for three months. Then the mollusks keep clam for another four to five years until farmers harvest them by pumping water into the bed.

The business has been growing in the Puget Sound region, and the pressure was on to use state lands.

DNR follows four guidelines in the management of 2.6 million acres of aquatic land owned by the people of Washington. Encouraging public use and making the most of renewable resources can generate revenue. Protecting the environment and fostering “water-dependent uses” eat money.

Though DNR leases 2,000 acres for aquaculture, there’s no geoduck farming on state land yet. DNR was working toward that possible use with the Anderson Island proposal.

Taylor Shellfish Co. has been in the shellfish business in Washington for 118 years, and already has geoduck farms in the South Sound, to the consternation of some of the farms’ neighbors.

Disputes over permits and practices have mobilized and polarized shoreline communities. People who are not making money off the giant clams argue that the farming practices spread trash throughout the Sound and damage marine habitat. They’re concerned that the water pumps used to harvest mature geoducks destroy sedimentary habitat. They have photos of birds caught in the netting, and they speculate that habitat disruption could damage salmon runs.

Given that, you can imagine the reaction Anderson Islanders had when they heard their much-loved public beach was on the DNR list.

They rallied for public meetings, and they contacted their state officials.

State Sen. Mike Carrell, who has training in oceanography, stepped up to their cause and carried their arguments to DNR officials.

On Friday, he rode the 6:30 p.m. Steilacoom II ferry to the island with a surprise in his briefcase.

He had written two bills that would have shooed the farm away from the island, and he outlined them to the crowd at the meeting.

Then he tore up the one that called for siting a farm on McNeil Island.

That afternoon, he said, he had gotten a letter from Francea McNair, DNR’s aquatic lands steward. Treble Point is off the list, she wrote, thanks to recently received “site specific environmental information.”

It could be something about eel grass. Or perhaps the agency feared hot tempers on the island might worsen global warming.

Either way, score one for the people who love Anderson Island enough to fight for it.

Source:http://www.thenewstribune.com