Fighting Pollution on the Half-shell: How Private Oyster Beds Protect Clean Water

"Willapa is the cleanest bay in the country, and it is the oystermen who have kept it that way." – Dick Wilson, Willapa Bay oyster grower, 1995.

Oysters are filter feeders, siphoning water and digesting phytoplantkon (minuscule marine algae) that pass through them. It is this method of feeding that makes oysters especially sensitive to pollution. Oysters can strain 20 to 30 quarts of water an hour, and any pollutants or pathogens in the water quickly accumulate in oyster tissue. This has been a burden on the oyster industry but a blessing to the health of Washington's waters.

As pollutants increased in Washington’s waters, the Olympia oysters again fell into decline. Oyster growers responded by introducing a Japanese species, commonly known as the Pacific oyster, which was hardier. These Pacific oysters sustained the industry for a time, but by World War II, the timber industry in Washington was pervasive, and sulfite liquor effluent from pulp mills around the state destroyed many oyster beds.

This time the oyster growers concentrated on improving water quality, inciting legislators to create the Washington Pollution Control Commission in 1945. The new law set water quality standards, made it unlawful to violate them, and created a control board to enforce them. In 1955, the Washington legislature strengthened these standards (only for industry, not municipalities), and as the oyster growers brought more cases to the Commission, pulp mills changed their behavior, and sulfite effluent declined.

The approach that oyster growers took to protecting water quality was a statutory one. They participated in and relied on the passage and enforcement of regulations to protect water quality. It is also possible to address pollution problems privately, such as common law remedies where ordinary people or a community of people hold the right not to be harmed against their will. Oyster growers might have been able to contract with pulp mills to solve their pollution problem or sued them under the common law for damaging their property, but the regulatory approach was the path they chose.

Importantly, oyster growers fought to defend their private interests, which meant fighting for clean water decades before anyone thought to call himself or herself an environmentalist. Their secure property right motivated them to protect their investment and enabled them with a means to protect clean water.

Today, however, many water pollution problems come from nonpoint source pollution (pollution from a large number of small sources, such as leaking septic tanks or agricultural runoff). Regulations exist (and more are in the pipeline) that address nonpoint source pollution, but their effectiveness is highly questionable. Oyster growers have yet to find an effective solution to nonpoint source pollution.

Nevertheless, local interests ranging from attorneys to environmentalists concede that the healthy, pristine nature of Willapa Bay is largely due to the efforts of the oyster growers, motivated by the desire to protect their livelihood.