Taylor must pay $630,000 back rent

By John Dodge | The Olympian • Published January 13, 2009

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OLYMPIA – The state Department of Natural Resources and Taylor Shellfish Farms have reached agreement on a claim for damages from the shellfish company's decades-long trespass on state tidelands in Totten Inlet.

The Mason County-based shellfish company has agreed to pay nearly $630,000 in back rent for oysters and geoducks it raised and harvested without a permit on 17 acres of state tidelands.

DNR opted not to seek treble damages after Taylor made a convincing case that the trespass, which began in 1972, was accidental, DNR spokeswoman Patty Henson said.

The settlement signed Monday requires Taylor Shellfish to pay $200,000 into a geoduck aquaculture research account for Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington to conduct research on the Gallagher Cove tidelands.

The settlement is voided if DNR decides not to lease the property to Taylor Shellfish for five years, or if the lease is successfully challenged in court. The start of the lease, which originally was scheduled to be made by outgoing Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland before he leaves office Wednesday, has a new deadline of Feb. 27.

DNR will accept comments on the proposed lease until Jan. 23.

The lease and settlement took on political overtones, with critics of the commercial shellfish industry's geoduck farms charging Sutherland — who received campaign financing from the industry in his unsuccessful bid for a third term — tried to push through the lease before he left office.

The victor in the lands commissioner race, Democrat Peter Goldmark, has had the support of shoreline property owners opposed to geoduck farming.

Under the settlement, Taylor would pay the state 11.23 percent of the farm value of the geoduck harvested from the tidelands and 15 percent of the value of the oysters, which would boost total revenues to the state from the settlement to about $1.3 million over the period of the lease.

Meanwhile, Taylor would be allowed to realize $3 million in revenue from the 6-7 acres of geoduck clams planted on the property the past six years, plus millions of dollars more from sale of the nearly 175,000 oysters on the property and whatever volume of additional oysters the company grows during the five-year lease.

"We think the settlement is reasonable," Taylor Shellfish spokesman Bill Dewey said.