Washington state cancels lease at site of salmon net-pen collapse

Washington state has terminated the lease at Cooke Aquaculture, the fish farm off Cypress Island that was behind a catastrophic failure that sent hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound last August.

“The termination was based on their failure to keep their facility in safe clean working order pursuant to their lease,” said Hilary Franz, Commissioner of Public Lands.

This comes days after the state fined Cooke $332,000 for the net-pen failure and blamed the company for negligence.

According to Franz, 110 tons of mussels and other organisms built up on the net-pen that failed.

Another net pen was also in poor condition and near catastrophic failure.

“They have misled the state and the public numerous times as to the conditions of their facility, number of fish that were released,” Franz added.

Cooke reported 160,000 Atlantic salmon escaped.

But Franz said more than 260,000 ended up in the Puget Sound.

KIRO 7 asked Franz if she believes Cooke was intentionally trying to mislead the state.

“I would say we have a number of incidents where it feels like they were either hiding the information or distorting the real facts,” Franz said.

KIRO 7 reached out to Cooke for a response.

Joel Richardson from Cooke sent us a statement that said "Given that Cooke Aquaculture Pacific received the notice of termination on Saturday, we will reserve comment until we've had the proper time to review the letter and assess its impact on our operations and our employees' livelihoods."

DNR terminated the lease at Cooke's Port Angeles facility in December.

Cooke has previously accused the state of a conducting an inaccurate report that fuels the push by aquaculture opponents to put Cooke out of business in Washington.

“This is not a witch-hunt,” Franz said. “This is about making sure I'm doing my due responsibility to the public and to the waters of Washington state.”

Franz also said there was a near disaster a month earlier in July that Cooke failed to report to the state and clean up.

KIRO 7 asked Franz if the state could have done more to monitor before the failure.

“I came into office a year ago and it's very clear in this situation that we need to do a better job of making sure that all of our leases, the leaseholder is maintaining and managing the facility and keeping a good working order,” Franz said.

DNR is currently inspecting Cooke’s other Washington facilities at Rich Passage and Hope Island.

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