Wednesday, February 20, 2013 • The South Whidbey Record
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Salmon net pen control disputed in Olympia Hawkins accepts Dist. Court nomination By JUSTIN BURNETT Staff reporter
Anticipating a difficult negotiation ahead with state regulators over their recent ban of net-pen salmon farming, the Island County Commissioners are putting high hopes on new legislation proposed in Olympia. House Bill 1599 would empower cities and counties to prohibit the siting of such facilities in their areas through provisions of longrange planning documents known as shoreline master programs. If passed, the new law would effectively end a longstanding power struggle between the state Department of Ecology, the agency mandated with reviewing, overseeing and enforcing tenets of the Shoreline Management Act, and junior governments that want more say over what activities are allowed in their areas. “We should be able to have the ability to control our own waters,” Board Chairwoman Helen Price Johnson. Aquaculture was a hot topic in Island County years ago, with net pen proposals in Holmes Harbor and an area called Saratoga Cove, between Bells Beach and Fox Spit. In December, the commissioners wrapped up years of work by approving an update to its shoreline master program. The document will guide development on and along the waterfront for the next 20 years. Among the many controversial topics discussed, netpen salmon farming is one of the only issues that saw strong opinion but little argument. Public testimony was overwhelmingly in favor of prohibiting net-pen salmon farming from being allowed anywhere in the county.
The board’s subsequent statement of autonomy when decision to prohibit non-native it comes to the permitting of fish pens altogether put it in commercial activity. “We’re asserting our local league with Jefferson County, which has been battling it control over our planning proout with the Department of cess,” she said. David Pater, a shoreline Ecology over its ban of netplanner with Ecology and the pen farming for years. State Rep. Kevin Van De official reviewing the county’s Wege, D-Sequim, is one of plan, said the department’s HB 1599’s primary spon- position is that net-pen farmsors and Jefferson County ing can’t be banned outright Commissioner Phil Johnson because it’s a water dependent use. has been a key Limiting figure behind “We should be activities on the proposed the water to legislation. able to have the that can’t “The bottom ability to control those take place anyline is they are our own waters.” where else is deleterious to the environHelen Price Johnson one of the corIsland County Commissioner nerstones of ment,” Johnson the shoreline said. management Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, is not one act. Ecology has the tricky of the bill’s sponsors but said job of managing that basic Friday that she could throw tenet with other pillars of the her support behind the bill in act, such as environmental protection and access to the its current form. “As it stands now, I think water. “We’re trying to manage it’s a good bill, but I want to see it when it comes out of that balance and that’s the challenge with these SMPs,” committee,” Smith said. “Counties should have the Pater said. The department has comability make their own decimunicated several concerns sion,” she said. The Island County com- to county officials about missioners are doing what restrictions in the update that they can to insure the bill’s may go too far and language passage, having unanimously concerning net-pen farming approved and submitted a let- is one of them. Pater said he is hopeful ter of support. According to Price Johnson, that the issues can be worked neither Island or Jefferson through cooperatively but counties’ adopted ban is a vio- acknowledged that the prolation of state law but rather a posed legislation could alter
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the discussion significantly if passed. “This bill could change a lot of things,” he said. It was introduced in the Local Government Committee and a public hearing was held in Olympia Friday afternoon but it was scheduled after press time and could not be reported on. Steve Erickson, representing the Whidbey Environmental Action Network, was planning to speak. Although Smith does not serve on local government, Rep. Dean Takko, D-Longview, the committee’s chairman, was a bill sponsor. Smith said Friday morning that she would be surprised if the bill didn’t make it out of committee. Should the bill die, Price Johnson said she would be “patient but persistent” and continue lobbying for the prohibition of net-pen farming in Island County. The public was “loud and clear” in its opposition to their presence anywhere around Whidbey or Camano Islands, she said. “That’s significant to me,” she said.
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Bill Hawkins will be the next Island County District Court judge. He replaces Peter Strow, who resigned earlier this year. Hawkins has practiced law for more than 30 years. He spent 17 years in the Island County Prosecutor’s Office, seven as the elected prosecutor, before 10 years in private practice. Most recently, he was the city prosecutor and attorney for Oak Harbor. Hawkins is a pro-tem judge in Island County
Bill Hawkins District Court and received his degree from the University of Colorado law school in 1982.
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