PORT TOWNSEND — In an effort to keep Mystery Bay open to commercial shellfish harvests, Jefferson County commissioners approved a moratorium on new boat moorage permits in the Marrowstone Island waterway.

The move allows the county Department of Community Development to work with the state Department of Health — which in August reclassified the bay to “conditionally approved” for shellfish harvesting based on the number of boats moored there — inside the sand spit off Griffith Point.

The department closed the bay to harvests beyond Griffith Point.

Jefferson County has until May 1, the beginning of the boating season, to implement a Mystery Bay management plan.

Good for 6 months

The moratorium is good for six months, said Al Scalf, county director of community development.

Scalf told the commissioners that his department, which is facilitating for stakeholders in creating the management plan, recommended the moratorium on behalf of his department.

“We are hiring someone to write up a management plan to give the county police powers” needed to deal with the issue, he said.

County Commissioner David Sullivan said although the waters of Mystery Bay are clean, the threat of discharge from boats moored in the bay is real.

“The contamination from the discharge can be instantaneous and so for the shellfish industry that’s an issue,” the Cape George Democrat said.

County Administrator Philip Morley agreed the moratorium was necessary, saying, “If you’re in a hole, stop digging, so don’t add any more buoys.”

Scalf said there were about 20 unlawful buoys and 34 legal buoys left in the bay.

Of the legal buoys, five were grandfathered, such as those owned by Nordland-based Marrowstone Shellfish Co.; 17 that included shoreline homeowners and others around the island and county who had the necessary permits; and 12 that were exempt as upland homeowners with boats moored near shorefront homes.

In recent years, more than 60 mooring buoys have spread across the bay, in addition to mooring facilities at Mystery Bay State Park and several private docks during peak boating season.

In all, there are structures to moor more 100 boats in Mystery Bay.

Scalf and other county planners will next meet with a stakeholder subcommittee of government agencies and private and private shellfish interests to begin drafting a bay management plan.

Final approval

The county will submit its locally approved Shoreline Master Program update, which includes Mystery Bay, to the state Department of Ecology for final approval.

The moorage buoy moratorium could be lifted by May 23, Scalf said, depending on the Shoreline Master Program’s status.

Once the county enacts the new Shoreline Master Program, the moratorium would be lifted for mooring buoy applications, which could then be processed under the program.

The state Department of Health closed the outer bay when the National Shellfish Sanitation Program defined it as a marina, which under that agency’s definition includes any water area with a structure such as mooring buoys constructed to provide temporary or permanent docking or mooring for more than 10 boats.

Based on the dispersed configuration of mooring buoys and the number of transient and continuously moored boats in Mystery Bay, state Health officials said it appears that most of Mystery Bay meets the national program’s definition of a marina and cannot be classified as approved.

Standards must be met

The state Health Department proposed the “conditionally approved” classification for the outer portion of Mystery Bay.

That means those shores would be closed to shellfish harvest until the standard can be met, meaning fewer than 10 boats.

When the Department of Health closed the outer bay last summer it recommended that the state Department of Natural Resources, which owns the tidelands, and Jefferson County reduce the number of mooring buoys around shellfish harvest sites below the marina threshold levels by:

n Removing unauthorized mooring buoys.

n Relocating as many buoys as possible away from shellfish harvest sites.

n Developing a management system, including monitoring and signs, to direct transient overnight moorage to Mystery Bay State Park.

n Place a moratorium on new mooring buoy permits in the immediate area of existing and proposed shellfish harvest sites.

Mystery Bay is a sheltered bay of about 78 acres on Marrowstone Island.

Fifteen acres are in the present conditionally approved area at the state park.

The original closure zone for the state park was developed in 1994 and included both the dock and the associated mooring buoys in front of the dock. The balance of the outer bay is about 44 acres, with a shallower inner bay of 19 acres.

As steward of the 2.6 million acres of state aquatic lands, DNR manages the bed lands under Puget Sound and the coast, many of Washington’s beaches, and natural lakes and navigable rivers.

DNR manages the bedlands to facilitate navigation, commerce and public access, and to ensure protection of aquatic habitat.

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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.