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Mariculture bill streamlines leasing process for shellfish and kelp farmers

The city of Seward and Resurrection Bay on Sept. 1, 2024.
Jamie Diep
/
KBBI
The city of Seward and Resurrection Bay on Sept. 1, 2024.

Southcentral Alaska’s mariculture industry is optimistic about a bill passed this summer that streamlines the leasing process for kelp and shellfish farmers.

The mariculture industry is growing across coastal communities in Alaska. That includes the cultivation of shellfish and kelp commercially.

State Rep. Sarah Vance, a Republican from Homer, sponsored HB 329 at the request of the Alaska Mariculture Alliance and a geoduck farmer. She said the legislation would help the burgeoning industry even more – by streamlining the process to run a mariculture site.

“For too long, the prospective maricultures have faced a convoluted multi agency application review process that takes years to complete. So this hurdle deterred a lot of people from entering the industry, limiting its growth,” she said.

The hefty bill mainly does three things. First, it changes up the lease renewal process. When tidelands for mariculture sites are first leased to a grower, the permit can last as long as 10 years. Subsequent renewals were also previously limited to 10 years. Now, the bill doubles the renewal period to up to 20 years.

Vance said the bill also makes it easier for growers to hold onto their leases.

“They can have the first right of refusal and know that they are, that their investment is going to be able to continue,” she said, “they're not going to have someone come and outbid them on a lease.”

The bill also does away with a requirement to get mariculture sites appraised every five years. Instead, appraisals are only required at the discretion of the state Department of Natural Resources commissioner.

Jason Lessard is the executive director of the Alaska Mariculture Alliance, an organization that aims to develop and support the state’s mariculture industry. He said the requirement wasn’t necessarily providing important information to the state.

To move to the commissioner's discretion, I think, was an acknowledgement that maybe it was just an unnecessary hoop to jump through on a very regular basis,” Lessard said.

Finally, the new legislation puts in some guard rails for leasing tidelands for carbon management. That’s in response to a bill passed last year that allows state land to be leased for carbon management.

Not a lot is known about the long term effects of carbon sequestration in the mariculture industry. In this case, that's the process of trapping carbon from the ocean in kelp. But the new bill tries to put some guardrails around that, too.

Lessard said before the bill passed, there wasn’t much regulation in place to protect local growers.

“We were concerned that there was going to be a flood of lease requests for carbon sequestration that would shoulder out Alaskans from local to these communities from participating in the industry,” he said, “and so we didn't want to see large swaths of bays being taken up by leases for this purpose.”

Now, Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources will need to send out public notice for any group that applies to lease tidelands for carbon management and announce that the state is “seeking competitive interest.”

So, what does this all mean for growers on the Kenai Peninsula, where there are close to a fifth of the state’s aquatic farms?

Briana Murphy is a mariculture liaison for the Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute in Seward. She said while the new legislation creates less paperwork on the grower’s end of the permit process, the longer lease period could also bring in more public input on potential mariculture sites.

“If people are looking at aquatic farm leases being approved for 20 years instead of 10 years, you know, they're going to look at it with a lot more scrutiny potentially,” Murphy said.

The bill also doesn’t change the public comment process to acquire or renew a lease. That includes a period where people in the surrounding area can give input on a lease. Anyone who submits public comment is able to appeal a decision made by the Department of Natural Resources.

Murphy said being caught in the appeals process can make things difficult for new farmers.

She said a lot remains to be seen on the bill’s effect on leases, but that growers in the region are also facing other challenges.

“In terms of, like, actual, you know, aquatic, farmable acreage on the water, you're kind of a little bit limited in terms of expansion, I think both in Resurrection Bay and in Kachemak Bay,” she said.

She said lower Cook Inlet is a potential area for the state to develop new leases.

Meanwhile, Lessard, with the Alaska Mariculture Alliance, said the group is continuing to grow the industry through a $49 million dollar grant from the federal government via the American Rescue Plan Act. That includes on the peninsula, where they’re funding projects in Homer to speed up mariculture growth.

Jamie Diep is a reporter/host for KBBI from Portland, Oregon. They joined KBBI right after getting a degree in music and Anthropology from the University of Oregon. They’ve built a strong passion for public radio through their work with OPB in Portland and the Here I Stand Project in Taipei, Taiwan.Jamie covers everything related to Homer and the Kenai Peninsula, and they’re particularly interested in education and environmental reporting. You can reach them at jamie@kbbi.org to send story ideas.
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