By Lynda V. Mapes
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — A Washington company has lost the lease for its Atlantic salmon net-pen farm in Port Angeles and must shut down and remove it, said Hilary Franz, state commissioner of public lands.
The farm, operated by a series of owners since 1984, currently holds nearly 700,000 Atlantic salmon. Franz said the Washington Department of Natural Resources would work with other state agencies to enforce an orderly shutdown and complete removal of the farm.
Franz said her decision is final. “There is no room for negotiation.”
At issue are risks to the public and the environment posed by Cooke Aquaculture Pacific’s farm on the east side of the Ediz Hook, Franz said. The farm, which comprises one large pen with 14 cages and a smaller pen with six cages, is outside the boundaries of its lease with the department and causing a navigation hazard, Franz said.
The farm also is polluting the water with fragments of plastic foam crumbling off its floats. Finally, anchor lines for the farm are missing or damaged, posing a risk of collapse and fish escape — as happened last summer at another Cooke farm, at Cypress Island, Franz said.
The dangers and unauthorized placement of the farm were discovered during inspections the week of Dec. 4 that Franz initiated, part of ongoing inspections she ordered for all of Cooke’s Washington fish farms after the Cypress Island escape.
“These are clear breaches and endanger the public,” she said.
The net pens “are located in a high-traffic area near Coast Guard and Naval facilities and the ferry between Port Angeles and Victoria,” she said.
Two anchor chains had come loose from their anchors, and a third had an open link vulnerable to complete failure, inspectors hired by DNR found.
The previous owner of the Port Angeles farm, Icicle Seafoods, had been questioned by DNR in October 2015 about to whether the net pens were operating outside of the lease boundaries. Icicle agreed to ensure that its net pens were fully within the boundaries by October 2016. Cooke assumed the lease when it bought Icicle this past May. DNR’s inspection this month revealed that the net pens are still outside the boundaries.
Joel Richardson, a spokesman for Cooke, said the letter of termination, which the company was informed of Friday afternoon, was a surprise.
“Cooke Aquaculture Pacific just received a notice from the Department of Natural Resources and we are evaluating their request,” Richardson said in an email. “This came as a surprise given the extensive improvements we have been undertaking to the site to ensure compliance, and our efforts to work with DNR to address self-identified issues in a cooperative manner.”
In her role as commissioner, Franz oversees 2.6 million acres of aquatic lands to ensure the public’s waters are protected and terms of leases enforced. Cooke leases public bed lands from DNR for all of its fish farms around Puget Sound.
