Doremus on Pending Decision on Chesapeake Bay Oysters
Matthew Freeman
Feb. 18, 2009
Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of several alternatives, including release of fertile Suminoe oysters and confined aquaculture of sterile oysters.You might wonder why federal agencies are involved at all. Virginia and Maryland proposed the introduction, prodded by the Virginia Seafood Council, which has conducted its own experiments with Asian oysters in tributaries to the Bay.
A Clean Water Act NPDES permit would seem to be required to introduce these organisms into the Bay, but until recently EPA was busy denying that it had any duty to regulate the discharge of living organisms into waterways. The Corps prepared an EIS only because Congress directed it to do so in 2004. Now officials from the Corps, Virginia, and Maryland will decide what to do.
Read the full post, here.
