A judge has ruled that the U.S. state of Washington’s ban on all net-pen aquaculture, instituted in November 2022, “has no legal effect.”
The original ban was instituted via an executive order issued by the Washington Department of Natural Resources on 18 November, 2022. Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, who announced the decision, said the department decided “there is no way to safely farm finfish in open sea net pens without jeopardizing our struggling native salmon.”
Soon after Franz announced the ban, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and Cooke Aquaculture sued the state, challenging the decision to ban all net pen finfish aquaculture.
That executive order, according to Thurston County Superior Court Judge Indu Thomas, the net pen ban by Franz constitutes nothing more than an internal directive to begin the rulemaking process, and the language of the ban has “no legal effect in Washington.”
“Last Friday, October 20, we got confirmation from Thurston County Superior Court that fish farming in commercial net pens is not illegal in Washington, contrary to the inflammatory public statements made by the Commissioner of Public Lands during her November 18, 2022, press conference, where she announced that ‘Washington’s public aquatic lands will no longer be home to commercial finfish net pen aquaculture,’” Northwest Aquaculture Association Executive Director Jeanne McKnight said in a release.
The NWAA won the right to intervene in the case in May 2023, after Judge Thomas ruled that the association had a more than attenuated interest in the suit.
“When NWAA intervened in the Jamestown S’Klallam complaint, we had hoped the Court would find that Commissioner Franz overstepped her authority in banning commercial net pens in state-owned aquatic lands,” McKnight said. Instead, we got the next best thing: clarification that what looked to the entire aquaculture sector as a de-facto ban on commercial net pens in Washington is not a ban at all—just hyperbole on the part of a politically motivated agency head who is now running to be the next Washington governor.”
The NWAA, and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, have been openly critical of Franz and the net pen ban, calling it a politically motivated decision. Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Chair and CEO W. Ron Allen told SeafoodSource that the core reason for the opposition to net-pen salmon farming is politically motivated.
“Well, Hilary wants to be governor. She's a very politically motivated individual,” Allen said. “She gets traction, at least based on her rhetoric and her perceptions. And so bashing the fish-farming industry has become a tool in her toolbox to help promote an image that she wants this state’s voters to see.”
While the ruling is a positive step, McKnight said the statements made by Franz have had an understandably negative effect on the salmon farming industry in Washington.
“While we are grateful for the clarification by the Court, the fact remains that the public statements by Commissioner Franz had a chilling effect on the entire aquaculture sector, caused by the climate of uncertainty from DNR’s public condemnation of one of the world’s most sustainable methods of food production,” McKnight said. “Now that we can confirm that marine fish farming is still legal in Washington state, we will continue to advocate for the development of responsible, sustainable aquaculture in the Pacific Region.”
Photo courtesy of the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance
