79.135.100 - Aquatic lands used for aquaculture production and harvesting -- Rents and fees -- Limitations on leases. - Washington Statutes

Aquatic lands used for aquaculture production and harvesting — Rents and fees — Limitations on leases.

(1) If state-owned aquatic lands are used for aquaculture production or harvesting, rents and fees shall be established through competitive bidding or negotiation.

     (2) After an initial twenty-three acres are leased, the department is prohibited from offering leases that would permit the intertidal commercial aquaculture of geoducks on more than fifteen acres of state-owned aquatic lands a [per] year until December 1, 2014.

     (3) Any intertidal leases entered into by the department for geoduck aquaculture must be conditioned in such a way that the department can engage in monitoring of the environmental impacts of the lease's execution, without unreasonably diminishing the economic viability of the lease, and that the lease tracts are eligible to be made part of the studies conducted under RCW 28B.20.475.

     (4) The department must notify all abutting landowners and any landowner within three hundred feet of the lands to be leased of the intent of the department to lease any intertidal lands for the purposes of geoduck aquaculture.

[2007 c 216 § 3; 1984 c 221 § 10. Formerly RCW 79.90.495.]