Today, Our Sound, Our Salmon leader Wild Fish Conservancy and coalition partners at Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Friends of the Earth filed a joint lawsuit challenging the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's (WDFW) a January decision to authorize Cooke Aquaculture to rear steelhead in their Puget Sound net pens.
Photo by John Gussman, Doubleclick Productions
For nearly two years, the public has been celebrating and counting down to 2022, when Washington's recent law would have required Cooke to remove their net pens from public waters. The new permit approved by WDFW in January will allow the company to continue operating in Puget Sound past the legislative phase out date by transitioning from banned Atlantic salmon to a domesticated, partially sterile form of steelhead.
This decision will not go unchallenged. The lawsuit filed today by WFC and our partners charges that WDFW's decision to permit this change of species violates the State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA). The proposal poses significant environmental risks and the agency's proposed mitigation measures are insufficient to prevent this well-documented environmental harm to Puget Sound, especially to threatened and endangered species. Review the filed complaint.
The SEPA violations include, but are not limited to:
failure to properly designate the lead agency failure to analyze direct and indirect impacts of the proposed actions
failure to analyze cumulative impacts of the action when added to other impacts to the Puget Sound ecosystem and environment
failure to base the threshold determinations on reasonably accurate information
failure to include sufficient mitigation measures
failure to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) failure to conduct an alternatives analysis
This legal argument echoes the concerns raised in public comments submitted this fall by thousands of Washington citizens, environmental groups, sport and commercial fishing groups, other agencies, and at least seven Washington tribal nations. These comments overwhelmingly called for WDFW to require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to ensure a comprehensive review of the risks, and challenged the agency's decision to instead rely on an outdated EIS completed in 1990, before the federal listing of Puget Sound steelhead, Southern Residents killer whales, and several populations of salmon. Learn more about the risks in comments submitted by Our Sound, Our Salmon.
WFC Director Kurt Beardslee collects samples from Atlantic salmon recovered by local tribes and commercial fishers following the August 2017 Cypress collapse. Research published in 2019 by Wild Fish Conservancy exposed nearly 100% of all the fish that escaped were infected with an exotic virus introduce by the industry.
“It’s outrageous that once again the State is leaving the oversight of this industry to the public,” says Kurt Beardslee, executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy, lead counsel in the case. “After the Cypress net pen collapsed, our research discovered that nearly every fish that escaped was infected with a pathogenic exotic salmon virus that had been undetected by WDFW and unreported by Cooke. Our litigation has won settlements many times larger than the penalties levied by the State, and the State has left it to us and the pens’ neighbors to detect serious problems. Given this history, it is beyond comprehension that WDFW would grant this permit without first completing a comprehensive assessment of its effects on our salmon, our sound, and our killer whales.”
While the State fined Cooke $332,000 for the 2017 collapse, WFC’s lawsuit over those same violations and others uncovered only by WFC brought a $2.75 million settlement. Until WFC presented the State with video of Cooke disposing of wild bycatch, WDFW accepted Cooke’s word that they never caught anything but the fish they were rearing.
“We need to be doing everything we can to save our wild salmon and orcas,” said Sophia Ressler, Washington wildlife advocate and staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity and co-counsel on the case. “Fish feedlots simply don’t belong in wild salmon waters. These net pens undermine the crucial work that has gone into restoring native fish runs.”
“Washington officials have turned their back on Puget Sound, its wildlife, and the communities living and working nearby,” said Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “It seems clear from recent history that Cooke does not abide by environmental conservation and protection standards in the state. Extending this corporation’s fish farming tenure without regard for the laundry list of environmental and socio-economic harms is both unlawful and irresponsible.”
“Washington state needs to stop giving away our public waters and wild species to private interests—factory fish farms do not belong in Puget Sound,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with Center for Food Safety’s Pacific Northwest office, and co-counsel in the case. “Washington officials are accountable not just to industry, but to the people of Washington, who want wild coasts and invaluable species protected from companies that do not respect our special places.”
Washington is the only state on the Pacific coast that permits these facilities. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced plans to transition all open-water industrial aquaculture in British Columbia to land-based facilities by 2025.
The conservation and environmental groups bringing this challenge are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen, PLLC and by attorneys at the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.