Steve Bloom/The Olympian
Linda Lentz and Nick Zittel walk along a section of east shore tidelands on Henderson Inlet on Tuesday. Some commercial shellfish growers in Henderson Inlet are reluctant to invest more money in their operations until concerns about water quality are resolved.

Oyster farm for public sought

JOHN DODGE THE OLYMPIAN

THURSTON COUNTY -- Henderson Inlet could soon be home to a community oyster farm planted, worked and perhaps someday harvested by the public.

The idea is to use the farm as one of the tools to improve water quality in the inlet north of Lacey, said Betsy Peabody, executive director of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund.

About 488 acres of commercial shellfish beds in Henderson Inlet are restricted or off-limits to harvest because of bacterial contamination from human and animal waste.

The waste enters the marine waters by way of stormwater runoff, creeks and shoreline discharges.

"The point of a community oyster farm is to build community support for correcting the pollution problems," Peabody said. "You do it in a way that invests people in the resource."

Pollution problems

The oyster farm is gaining support from those eager to turn back the tide of pollution, including commercial shellfish grower Linda Lentz, who leases some shellfish-growing tidelands several hundred yards north of the restricted harvest zone in Henderson Inlet.

"We don't want to invest too much money into growing shellfish here until we know what's going to happen with the water quality," she said during a Tuesday tour of the beach.

Thurston County formed a shellfish protection district for Henderson Inlet in December 2001.

The county also committed to developing an action plan to tackle the pollution.

It's off to a somewhat rocky start, with environmentalists chastising the county commissioners for not cracking down more aggressively on likely pollution sources and farmers, developers and shoreline property owners wrangling over who is to blame.

"There's a lot of finger-pointing going on," said Robin Downey, executive director of the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association, a group co-sponsoring the project. "A community oyster farm encourages people to work together."

A similar project in Drayton Harbor near Blaine is off to a good start, Peabody said. Oysters were planted in June 2001 on ground that is off-limits to harvest.

The ambitious goal is to correct the pollution problems by summer 2004, when the oysters are mature and ready to harvest.

"We think the project was very well planned," said Bob Woolrich, a shellfish program manager with the state Department of Health. "There's a lot of value in an aquaculture project like this."

No sure harvest

However, all involved must be aware that simply planting the oysters in the tidelands doesn't guarantee they can be harvested, Woolrich said.

The pollution must be curbed and the water quality improvements documented before the first oyster is lifted off the shellfish bed.

That will be no small task in the 45-square-mile Henderson Inlet watershed, where the population grew from 38,000 in 1989 to 53,000 in 2000.

Another 12,000 people are expected to live in the watershed by 2010.

"A lot of these people don't even know we grow oysters and clams in Henderson Inlet," Lentz said.

A community oyster farm also would provide public waterfront access, something in short supply in Henderson Inlet, she said.

The Puget Sound Restoration Fund, a nonprofit group working on shellfish and habitat restoration projects throughout Puget Sound, and the oyster growers association have yet to identify the tidelands for the community oyster farm.

That could happen as soon as spring, Peabody said.

In Drayton Harbor, funding and support for the project comes from local and state government, tribes, private industry and citizen volunteers.

"We want to make the public into oyster growers," Lentz said. "Everybody knows we need new strategies like this to combat shellfish closures."

John Dodge covers the environment and energy for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5444 or by e-mail at jdodge@olympia.gannett.com.

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