Rep. Sarah Vance’s House Bill 52 would burden 98.5% of Cook Inlet fishermen. It illegally authorizes exclusive right and privilege for the Tutka pink salmon hatchery to exploit Kachemak Bay’s State Park and critical shellfish habitat. Vance knows full well that 590 setnet and 502 drift businesses are denied access to participate in this exclusive, privileged, inaccessible Lower Cook Inlet Tutka Hatchery fishery.
HB52 sanctions Cook Inlet Aquaculture’s (CIAA) self-serving and misappropriation of $20 million in 2% salmon enhancement taxes (SET). This annual tax fleeces 1,092 Inlet businesses’ valuable wild sockeye harvest.
In exchange, for CIAA’s failing no-benefit boondoggles, fishermen are bamboozled with misleading public-relations lip service, glossy annual reports, future promise, failed inaccessible hatcheries, disease and damage to wild systems and species of concern. Yet CIAA’s annual $4.5 million hatchery expense allows only 17 out of 1,109 Area H fishermen access.
Rep. Vance’s HB 52 Tutka hatchery bailout campaign endorses CIAA’s delusional empire, serving as its own private ATM. This malfunctioning ATM is hemorrhaging $17 million in loans to resuscitate the failed, inaccessible, diseased Tutka hatchery. This holds hostage all limited-entry permits.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, HB52 obscures misdealings of Cook Inlet Aquaculture’s insolvency. Using this fiscally irresponsible bill squarely burdens 1,092 fishermen, who physically have no access and no preference for pink salmon. CIAA’s use of public trust wild fishery nurseries as an ATM machine for self-service must cease.
HB 52 demands scrutiny to expose Rep. Vance’s deceptive intentions on this misguided, fiscally irresponsible, exclusive-comrade privilege. The Tutka Hatchery is illegal, makes other hatcheries look bad and needs to go away.
— Wes Humbyrd
Homer
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