On August 11, I opened my mailbox and found a letter from Agriculture Development Group, Inc. letting me know that pesticides were being applied to tideflats in Willapa Bay as part of a state-funded research project.

The letter said the application window was August 9 through August 13.

I read it twice. Then I checked the date.

By the time I was “notified,” the spraying had already been happening for two days.

That’s not notification. That’s paperwork catching up with reality.

Why I Waited

This happened in August. I’m writing about it in December.

That was a choice.

When I first opened this letter, I was angry. I wanted to fire off a response immediately. But in this community, reacting out of anger usually just adds noise.

So I waited. I let the season cool down. I wanted to see if the facts looked different once the immediate frustration faded.

They don’t.

The timeline is still broken. The transparency is still missing. And the precedent is still dangerous.

A Map You Can’t Read

Included with the letter was a map that was supposed to show exactly where these chemicals were being applied. The text described “white polygons” marking the test sites, but the image itself was a dark, grainy, indecipherable photocopy.

I looked at it. I squinted at it. I couldn't make sense of it.

If you are putting chemicals into shared waters, your neighbors shouldn't have to guess where they are going. Sending a map that looks like a smudge isn’t transparency. It’s a box-checking exercise designed to satisfy a permit requirement, not to actually inform the people living and working here.

The “1,000-Foot” Mystery

When I spoke to the project contact to ask why I was receiving this notification, he told me the only reason was because we owned a shellfish bed within 1,000 feet of a test site.

That statement directly contradicts the letter itself.

The notification explicitly states that the test sites will be “distant from neighboring commercial shellfish beds by more than 1,000 feet,” and it relies on that buffer to imply that surrounding commercial operations are safe.

So which is it?

Are our beds more than 1,000 feet away, as the permit language asserts? Or are we within 1,000 feet, as the project manager stated on the phone?

If we are outside the buffer zone, why were we notified at all? If we are inside it, then the safety premise cited in the permit does not exist.

The letter also states that the test plots themselves “will not be commercially harvested within one year.” That is a standard precaution, and it makes sense. But it leaves neighboring farms in limbo. If safety is based on distance, and distance cannot be clearly identified or confirmed, then what exactly are we being asked to rely on?

You cannot manage risk if you don’t know where the risk is located.

A Bay You Don’t Experiment On Casually

I didn’t grow up in Willapa Bay. I came here later in life, with a lot to learn and a lot of humility. One of the first lessons I learned is that this bay doesn’t respond well to force.

Willapa Bay is one of the largest and most productive estuaries on the West Coast. It’s a nursery for salmon and crab, a critical stop along the Pacific Flyway, and the foundation for an ecosystem that reaches far beyond oysters or shellfish farming. What happens here doesn’t stay here.

And it’s fragile.

Estuaries always are. Everything overlaps. Everything feeds something else. Small interventions can ripple in ways no spreadsheet or permit can fully model.

That’s not ideology. That’s ecology.

A Short Story About Eelgrass

When we started farming here, we were told, by people who had been doing it for generations, that we were making a mistake by letting eelgrass grow.

Eelgrass, we were told, gets in the way. It complicates farming. It slows things down. The conventional wisdom was to clear it out.

We didn’t.

Not because we were smarter, but because we weren’t convinced we understood the system well enough to override it.

So we let the eelgrass come back.

What happened next surprised a lot of people. The beds stabilized. Burrowing shrimp pressures dropped naturally. Olympia oysters, the native oysters that had nearly disappeared, started showing up again on their own. The ecosystem began doing what healthy ecosystems do when you stop fighting them.

That experience left a mark on me.

It taught me that in complex natural systems, humility usually beats control.

What the Letter Actually Says

The letter explains that the project is being conducted under Experimental Use Permits issued by the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the Department of Ecology. The goal is to test whether a “certified organic insecticide” can reduce burrowing shrimp while “protecting the environment and non-target species”.

The product being applied is Pyganic EC 1.4. Its active ingredient is pyrethrin. It’s organic. It’s naturally derived. And yes, it’s designed to kill invertebrates by disrupting their nervous systems.

I was told not to worry because it’s organic.

Here’s the thing: arsenic is organic. Cyanide is organic. Nature produces plenty of things that kill indiscriminately.

“Organic” isn’t a synonym for “harmless.” It’s a category, not a guarantee.

The Real Issue Isn’t Chemistry

I want to be clear about something.

This isn’t an anti-science argument. Research matters. Good science matters. We depend on it.

What doesn’t work is pretending that broad-spectrum chemicals behave politely once they hit a tidal ecosystem. Water moves. Sediment moves. Plankton moves. Life doesn’t stay inside neat little test polygons.

And what really doesn’t work is asking for trust after the fact.

A letter postmarked August 5 for spraying that began August 9, and arrived August 11, denies landowners, farmers, and community members any real opportunity to engage, observe, or even ask questions before chemicals enter shared public waters.

Research without timely notice isn’t collaboration. It’s compliance theater.

The Bay Is Not a Lab

Willapa Bay isn’t an abstract testing ground. It’s a living system that feeds families, supports small businesses, sustains wildlife, and anchors an entire coastal economy.

Calling something “experimental” should raise the bar for transparency, not lower it.

If these treatments are safe, necessary, and well understood, then they should withstand public discussion before application, not after.

Sunlight doesn’t kill good science. It strengthens it.

What Needs to Change

This doesn’t have to be adversarial. It just needs to be better.

At a minimum, experimental chemical applications in shared estuarine waters should include:

• Meaningful advance notice (30 days)
• Clear, legible maps and specific identification of impacted neighboring properties
• Confirmed receipt by adjacent landowners
• Time for public questions and observation

That’s not radical. It’s respectful.

We farm oysters for a living. We depend on this bay being healthy long after we’re gone. We work with partners who stake their reputations on transparency and stewardship.

We’re not anti-science. We’re pro-humility, pro-accountability, and pro-bay.

And we’re done confusing the word “organic” with the word “trust.”

#WillapaBay #PacificNorthwest #Estuaries #CleanWater #Aquaculture #EnvironmentalStewardship #WillapaWild