DNR rejects Taylor Shellfish lease agreement

By John Dodge | The Olympian • Published February 06, 2009

Comments (0)

State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark announced Thursday that he won't sign a lease with Taylor Shellfish that was negotiated by past Commissioner Doug Sutherland to settle the Mason County-based company's long-term trespass on state tidelands in Totten Inlet.

The lease and claim for damages settlement was signed Jan. 12, the day before Sutherland left office but 11 days before the deadline for public comment on the proposal.

"When a state agency asks for the public's input when the issue is already decided, it is a violation of the public's trust," Goldmark said in a prepared statement.

Renegotiation

Goldmark also said he wants to renegotiate the lease and damage claim settlement separately.

"We don't know what they are thinking," Taylor Shellfish spokesman Bill Dewey responded. "The lease was integral with the settlement."

The two sides will meet Monday to begin talks on the controversial lease and settlement.

The January agreement between DNR and Taylor Shellfish called on the company to pay the state $630,000 in back rent for oysters and geoducks it raised and harvested without a permit on 17 acres of state tidelands. It also required the company to pay $200,000 into a research account to study the environmental effects of geoduck farming on the Gallagher Cove tidelands.

The state also would have received about $1.3 million in geoduck and oyster harvest proceeds from Taylor's commercial shellfish operation on the state lands.

In return, Taylor would have received a five-year lease to realize millions of dollars of oyster and geoduck harvest revenue, but it was prohibited from planting any more geoducks.

Geoduck farming on the shores of Puget Sound has become a major bone of contention with some waterfront homeowners. It also was geoduck farm critics who brought to the attention of state officials that Taylor Shellfish had trespassed on the state tidelands for more than 30 years.

Goldmark and opponents of the lease charged Sutherland with doling out political favors to Taylor Shellfish, one of several commercial shellfish companies that contributed money to Sutherland's unsuccessful bid for a third term.

Taylor Shellfish made the case, and DNR under Sutherland agreed, that the trespass was an honest mistake wrapped up in a purchase of private tidelands in the area years ago.

Goldmark, a Democrat, defeated Sutherland, a Republican, in the November general election.