A state environmental review board upheld King County’s permit for a commercial kelp farm off of Fern Cove, ruling unanimously that the proposed operation would not harm the environment, limit recreational boating or create a visual blight.

The 70-page decision, issued by four members of the state Shoreline Hearings Board on Feb. 28, marks a significant victory for Mike Kollins, founder of Vashon Kelp Forest, bringing him one step closer to installing a 10-acre bull kelp growing operation in Colvos Passage.

“It’s lovely to have a third-party, unbiased board … concur with reality,” Kollins said. Contending that opponents have misstated what his farm would look like and other aspects of his proposal, he added, “There’s nothing in the (board’s decision) that says we misled or overstated or omitted.”

After the decision was issued, he added, he notified his mailing list of around 100 parties. “I’ve been really pleased by the response.”

Mary Bruno, a leader in the Fern Cove Preservation Alliance, which appealed Kollins’ permit to the Shoreline Hearings Board, said she and others are disappointed by the decision but fully respect the process. The group is weighing whether to appeal the decision to King County Superior Court, the next step in the appellate process, she said.

As for Kollins’ suggestion that the preservation group put forward misinformation, Bruno, in a statement issued by the group, said: “We did the best we could using information and data that Mr. Kollins provided through the discovery process.

“The Shoreline Hearings Board correctly found that Fern Cove is a unique natural space and preserve. Technical differences between renderings aside, the facts remain that this 10-acre project is as close as 800 feet from the Fern Cove Preserve and includes hundreds of floats and buoys and eight full time flashing lights. It will seriously degrade an important public space for Vashon islanders.”

Kollins proposed his commercial operation near Fern Cove, a publicly owned nature preserve, in 2022. The operation would entail up to 32 aquaculture lines seeded with kelp, buoys and floats to demarcate the project and eight Coast Guard-required navigational lights. Calling it a social enterprise, Kollins has said he would grow only bull kelp, rather than the more commercially viable sugar kelp, and leave a large portion of it on the lines to enable researchers to study whether bull kelp from his farm can self-propagate.

He said he was drawn to the idea of kelp farming after he became aware of bull kelp’s decline and found there was considerable science about the importance of kelp but a dearth of research about how to restore it. “We decided to see if we could build a model for research that’s financially sustainable,” he said.

Last summer, the county issued him a substantial shoreline development permit, a critical and near-final step in the complex permitting process. But a month later, the Fern Cove alliance appealed the county’s permit decision, putting the issue before the state Shoreline Hearings Board. The board, a quasi-judicial body, held a five-day hearing in December, which included a visit to the site.

The hearings board looked at 12 legal issues that both Kollins and the preservation alliance agreed were in question — including whether the county failed to consider the cumulative impacts of the proposal, failed to consider the project’s aesthetic and recreational impacts, failed to explore ways to reduce the project’s impacts and violated state law by relying on uncertain mitigation measures. The board ruled in Kollins’ favor on all 12 issues.

“The Board concludes that King County … properly considered the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of the project,” the board’s decision states. King County, it added “had adequate information regarding the project’s impacts on recreation and aesthetics to determine that such impacts, if mitigated, would not result in an adverse impact to the environment.”

The board said the county’s mitigation conditions, including a requirement that Kollins limit the number of buoys used in the operation and ensure they’re neutral in color, were sufficient. Lighting, the board added, “will be the minimum to address navigational safety” and will minimize “conflicts between the project and the visual and aesthetic qualities of (the) Fern Cove Preserve and the adjacent properties.”

The decision also acknowledges King County Executive Dow Constantine’s role in the county’s review process. While Kollins’ application was pending, according to testimony before the hearings board, “a representative from the King County Executive’s Office contacted Permitting and indicated that the King County Executive was interested in kelp farming.”

County permitting staff said the executive’s interest in kelp farming resulted in placing Kollins’ permit ahead in the queue, but they did not treat the review process differently, a contention the board seemed to accept — beyond noting Constantine’s interest, it found no wrongdoing by the county.

With his county lease secured, Kollins said he now plans to seek an aquatic lease from the state Department of Natural Resources, the last step in the permitting process. He hopes he’ll receive a lease in time to install his kelp-growing lines later this year, enabling him to harvest kelp next year.

Vashonkelpforest.com Photo, used with permission Mike Kollins with his family in front of his proposed site.

DNR, however, has yet to issue a lease to Pacific Sea Farms, another kelp farm off of Vashon that is farther along in the process than Kollins is. According to Pacific Sea Farms’ website, its owners — Mike Spranger and Gretchen Aro — expect to get a state lease early this year.

“It’s a new thing, and regulators are reasonably saying, ‘let’s not rush it,’” Kollins said.

Meanwhile, Kollins added, he continues to talk to potential researchers interested in the opportunities his project presents. Bull kelp, a foundational part of the Puget Sound’s nearshore environment, has declined dramatically over the years — scientists say 80 to 90 percent of this underwater forest has disappeared from central Puget Sound over the past century — and agencies, tribes and nonprofit organizations have teamed up to try to address the situation.

Kollins said he has already scheduled meetings with biologists from the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, the University of Washington, the Puget Sound Restoration Fund and other groups interested in using his site as a research platform. Several of those meetings have already taken place, and baseline data collection has already begun, he added.

“They want to understand what’s happening to bull kelp in the Puget Sound and why,” Kollins said. “Having a site like this will help them learn more about it.”

But Bruno, for her part, remains concerned about what she sees as a number of uncertainties with the project, including what success will look like, what metrics Kollins will use to measure success and whether Kollins might someday walk away from the research component or sell his operation to a larger corporation.

“I know what he says he wants to do, and I respect that interest in restoring bull kelp,” Bruno said, “but we’ve not heard those kinds of specifics.”

“Nobody in this community,” she added, “is opposed to restoring bull kelp.”

But Kollins said he remains deeply committed to research and has no intention to walk away from the project.

“It’s true — there’s no legal requirement for the UW or anyone else to do research at the site. … And I’m not getting a research lease; I’m getting a commercial lease.” But several groups, he added, have expressed keen interest in research. “It’s more than my word.”

Leslie Brown is a former editor of The Beachcomber.

Correction: The surname of Mike Kollins was misspelled in a photo caption accompanying this article online. We regret the error.