S-2148.1          _______________________________________________

                       SUBSTITUTE SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8019

                  _______________________________________________

State of Washington              54th Legislature             1995 Regular Session

By Senate Committee on Natural Resources (originally sponsored by Senators Oke, Owen, Snyder, A. Anderson, Haugen, Bauer, Gaspard, McDonald, Swecker, Roach, Strannigan, Palmer, Hochstatter, Morton, West, Rasmussen and Spanel)

Read first time 03/01/95.

Requesting federal assistance to facilitate the implementation of judicial decisions concerning the harvest of fish and shellfish.

     TO THE HONORABLE BILL CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

     We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent and petition as follows:

     WHEREAS, The United States Congress has in this new session entertained, debated, and passed legislation that would prohibit federal mandates upon states without the coincident provision of the means necessary to implement the mandates; and

     WHEREAS, To extinguish Indian claims to lands in the Washington Territory, the United States entered into a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Washington Territory in 1854 and 1855; and

     WHEREAS, These federal treaties became binding on, indeed, a federal mandate on, the State of Washington upon its entry into statehood; and

     WHEREAS, In these treaties, the United States "secured" to the tribes "[t]he right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations . . . in common with all citizens of the Territory . . ."; and

     WHEREAS, In 1974, federal district court Judge Boldt held, and the United States Supreme Court later affirmed, that said clause entitled the treaty tribes to harvest up to fifty percent of each run of anadromous fish passing through ancestral tribal fishing areas; and

     WHEREAS, In December 1994, federal district court Judge Rafeedie interpreted the treaty provision providing "[t]hat they shall not take shellfish from any beds staked or cultivated by citizens . . ." and held the treaties to also include the tribal harvest of shellfish on ancestral tribal fishing areas, including shellfish from natural beds on privately owned tidelands; and

     WHEREAS, This federal treaty provision, this mandate, will cost the State of Washington untold millions of dollars to provide meaningful public recreational shellfish harvesting opportunities; to work with private tideland owners, many of whom have made significant investments in aquatic farming; to implement sound conservation and management programs for non-Indian commercial harvesting; and to increase the scientific data base needed to provide biologically sustainable harvesting programs for tribal shellfish harvesting;

     NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully implore the United States government to provide the State of Washington all due and necessary assistance to implement the aforementioned mandate, including, but not limited to, funds necessary to implement administration of dual shellfish management and compensation for the losses wrought upon Washington's economy.

     BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately transmitted to the Honorable Bill Clinton, President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and each member of Congress from the State of Washington.

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