Drafter
Clerk 11/29/2018
Title
AN ORDINANCE creating the Poverty Bay shellfish protection district; establishing the district's boundaries; establishing a shellfish protection program; and adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 2.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. The Washington state Department of Health regulates commercial shellfish beds consistent with the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.
2. The Washington state Department of Health collects a minimum of six water quality samples per year at defined nearshore marine water quality monitoring stations. The monitoring stations are labeled in Attachment A to this ordinance. The National Shellfish Sanitation Program standard for approved shellfish harvesting is a fecal coliform geometric mean not greater than fourteen organisms per one hundred milliliters with an estimated ninetieth percentile not greater than forty-three organisms per one hundred milliliters.
3. Due to the failure to meet the National Shellfish Sanitation Program standard at the Washington state Department of Health marine water quality monitoring stations at the mouth of Cold creek and at the mouth of Woodmont creek, on September 14, 2016, the Washington state Department of Health officially downgraded from approved to conditionally approved status the classification of 124.4 acres of commercial shellfish harvesting area in Poverty bay, which is located on Puget Sound in King County.
4. Due to the downgrade, RCW 90.72.045 requires the King County council to create a shellfish protection district and establish a shellfish protection program to address the causes or suspected causes of pollution contributing to the water quality degradation that led to the downgrade. Additionally, RCW 90.72.045 requires the council to initiate implementation of the shellfish protection program within sixty days after it is established.
5. The Washington state Department of Health determined that the degradation of Poverty bay water quality is primarily du...

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