Drakes Bay Oyster Company operated in Point Reyes for
decades until National Park Service officials used falsified data to force
Kevin Lunny’s family-run oyster farm to shut down. The experience has left
its mark on Lunny: “We are terrified,” he told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday.
“Let me be clear, we did not fail as a business,” Lunny
said in his prepared testimony. “This was not bad luck. Rather, the Park Service engaged
in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption to run our small business out
of Point Reyes.”
Lunny made this statement in response to a question by Republican Rep. Raul Labrador asking whether or not
Lunny felt like there could be consequences from his testimony against the
National Parks Service.
Even Democratic California Rep. Jared Huffman admitted
that in the rush to get rid of industry from Point Reyes, government officials
and environmentalists “overstated” evidence that Lunny’s farm was harming
the environment. “No one has apologized,” Lunny said.
Drakes Bay Oyster Company is located in Northern
California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, where it has been for decades.
Point Reyes isn’t your typical national park because it was created to preserve
the historic coastline where people have been settled since the Gold Rush.
It was never intended to be a major tourist attraction like Yellowstone.
For decades the Park Service had a good relationship with
the oyster company, but that all changed in the mid-2000s. All of the sudden,
NPS officials started blaming the company for an 80 percent decline in the
local harbor seal population. Officials also blamed Lunny’s farm for upsetting
the ecological balance of Drakes Estero.
But all of these accusations against Drakes Bay Oyster
Company turned out to be completely false. The National Parks Service lacked
any scientific data to back up its claims that the company was killing seals
and hurting the local environment. In fact, studies done by the U.S. Geological
Survey and the California State Health Department showed the Parks Service
was completely wrong.
NPS, however, didn’t stop there and kept making false
claims against the oyster company. “The Park Service misrepresented that
study,” Lunny said. “They instead attempted to demonstrate harm by substituting
data from a sixty-year-old study conducted at the Sea of Japan and attributing
it to our farm.”
“For example, in assessing the noise impact of our small
outboard motor boats, the Park Service, rather than measuring our boats on
our soundscape [as required], instead used the measurements from a
seventy-horsepower, 700cc Kawasaki jet ski in New Jersey,” Lunny added.
Lunny appealed to higher ups at the National Park Service
for help in the matter and to correct the record on false statements made by
the agency, but he got no help from the government.
“The local Park Service staff were not willing to correct
the false claims, so we went to the Regional Director,” Lunny said. “No help
there. Then we went to the Park Service Director, and finally the Secretary
of Interior. No one, at any level, was willing to admit that false science
was being used against us, or to at least correct the record and stop the
false accusations.”
The Interior Department’s own inspector general even
found misconduct by agency officials and that they misrepresented facts.
But even so, the inspector general was powerless to stop Parks Service
officials from attacking Lunny’s business.
Eventually, Drakes Bay Oyster Farm closed
its doors because of the litigation and
regulatory actions taken by the federal government.
“What the Park Service did to our family was unconscionable,”
Lunny said. “This polluted legacy of false science has tainted our dealings
with state and federal agencies, and has resulted in unnecessary regulatory
and legal action against our family and our farm.”
Related Posts
-
http://agenda21news.com/2015/04/oyster-farmer-we-are-terrified-of-the-government/
No comments:
Post a Comment