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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 15, 2017
Beach Bill: ‘These public beaches present a unique opportunity’
Committed to the cause
Continued from Page 1A
Oregon Coast for the first time
in 30 years, he said. His coast
roots were planted mostly on
the beaches of Gearhart and
Lincoln City, but his dad’s love
for the beaches spanned the
entire coastline, he said.
“He helped Oregonians
understand themselves. He
knew if you took care of nature,
nature would take care of you,”
he said.
‘Unique opportunity’
Major players in the tourism
industry, such as soon-to-be
chairman of Travel Oregon
Ryan Snyder and Oregon Coast
Visitors Association Execu-
tive Director Marcus Hinz,
also came to celebrate the bill
that supports Oregon’s tourism
industry.
“This is important because
the ethos of this bill is built into
our public coast brand,” Hinz
said. “These public beaches
present a unique opportunity.
We have to balance economic
development and responsibil-
ity, and we are taking the long
view approach to doing that (in
Oregon).”
Other festivities of the day
included a beach bike demo, a
sandcastle-building demonstra-
tion and a performance from
The Weather Machine, a band
who recorded songs inspired
by travels up the entire Oregon
Coast.
“This is a celebration about
saving the beach,” Chamber of
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: Tad McCall, son of late Oregon governor Tom McCall, far right, speaks at the Beach Bill anniversary presentation
Saturday in Cannon Beach. The celebration was to recognize the efforts of those who sought to protect and maintain
public beaches in Oregon. TOP LEFT: Keenan McGrath of Portland climbs a wall of sand Saturday in Cannon Beach as
part of the Beach Bill anniversary celebration. TOP MIDDLE: Hundreds of people flocked to Cannon Beach last weekend
to celebrate the Beach Bill anniversary. TOP RIGHT: A member of the Form Finders, a group that specializes in sandcastle
construction, makes a few design changes to the finished product during the Beach Bill anniversary celebration Saturday.
Commerce Executive Director
and key organizer Court Car-
rier said. “What if the beach
would have been privatized?
Can you imagine not being able
to walk along the beach? This
bill is probably the reason why
this visitor economy exists on
the coast.”
Beach memories
Mayor Sam Steidel was
in the third grade when Gov.
McCall visited Cannon Beach.
“I remember seeing the
helicopter,” Steidel said. “I
know that the governor was
there, and I remember some
men in some suits, but mostly I
remember the helicopter.”
While some of the details of
that day were fuzzy, a Cannon
Beach where people couldn’t
walk along the dry sand is sim-
ply one Steidel said he can’t
imagine.
“The beach — it’s in our
name,” he said.
McCall remembers the day
his dad flew to Cannon Beach,
but in the way most people
probably did.
“I saw it on TV,” McCall
laughed. “That was business.
We were his family. I didn’t
realize the significance at the
time of what he did — he was
just my dad.”
But the event neverthe-
less had an impact on him. He
joined the U.S. Navy in 1967,
where he started his 50-year
career championing environ-
mental protection in the mil-
itary. In 2003, he moved to
the U.S. Army as a consultant
to develop the first major fed-
eral agency commitment to
sustainability.
He joined in a time where
environmentalists and those in
the military clashed about the
role of pollution in military
exercises.
Today he still works in this
field as a program manager
for the Institute for Renewable
Natural Resources at Texas
A&M University.
“(My father) influenced me
a lot. He taught me you can
bring these parties together,” he
said. “When people are angry,
that’s when you reach out to
bring them together.”
As for speaking in the
inclement weather? Just
another testament to Orego-
nian’s commitment to the
beach, he said.
“It wouldn’t have been the
same any other way.”
Clash: ‘We’re looking to preserve jobs and protect the local economy’
Continued from Page 1A
growing presence elicits a mix
of gratitude and resentment
from commercial fishermen
who have watched warily as
Pacific has become the dom-
inant processor in virtually
every commercial fishing port
in Oregon and Washington.
If Pacific goes ahead with
the Trident acquisition, it will
leave just two major seafood
processors in the state’s busiest
commercial fishing port. “It’s
amazing to walk down the Bay-
front,” said Bob Eder, a New-
port commercial fisherman for
45 years. “It appears that New-
port is becoming a company
town.”
Pacific is applying a polit-
ical full-court press in Salem,
where lawmakers represent-
ing coastal districts are push-
ing the Department of Justice
to find a compromise. Time is
of the essence: The commer-
cial season for Pacific whiting,
the kind of fish the Trident plant
in Newport is equipped to pro-
cess, opens Monday.
Rep. David Gomberg,
D-Central Oregon Coast, said
he’s well aware of the fisher-
men’s gripes about Pacific’s
heavy-handed tactics. “For
the fishermen, I know it’s bet-
ter to have options,” Gomberg
said. “But we’re looking to pre-
serve jobs and protect the local
economy.”
In the courtroom
Seven years ago, another
Pacific expansion move was
causing heartburn in the North-
west commercial fishing indus-
try. Pacific had entered into an
exclusive marketing agreement
with Ocean Gold, a large West-
port, Washington, processor,
to sell its fish. Dulcich person-
ally owned a minority share
in Ocean Gold and eventually
moved ahead with plans to buy
the company outright.
Today, a related case is still
dragging through the courts.
The litigation has not always
gone well for the fishermen.
Their first complaint was set-
tled with no money changing
hands.
But the litigation prompted
the Department of Justice to
launch two antitrust investi-
gations of Pacific. The state
Jeff Manning/The Oregonian
Stephen Webster’s Bayfront property is sandwiched by
Pacific Seafood Group. That wasn’t a problem until he
leased the Newport site to a competing seafood proces-
sor, Webster told The Oregonian. There have been ten-
sions, he said, over such things as stinking fish guts be-
ing stored outside their front door.
Jeff Manning/The Oregonian
Pacific Seafood Group has a growing footprint on the Newport bayfront, where it has
purchased three seafood processing properties in the last year and aims to add a surimi
plant to its portfolio. But the Clackamas-based company — already dogged by accusa-
tions of being too large and abusing its market power — is making an “unprecedented”
request: It wants assurances from the Oregon Department of Justice that the agency
won’t object to the transaction on antitrust grounds.
never filed its own case against
the seafood giant but in 2015 it
intervened on behalf of the fish-
ermen’s lawsuit. “Fishermen
face both the threat of reduced
purchase prices from the
merger and reduced choice due
to elimination of future compe-
tition whereas Pacific Seafood
will not be prejudiced,” the
state wrote.
The litigation outraged
Pacific and many of its support-
ers. No company had paid more
to commercial fishermen than
Pacific, they argued, nor had
done more to build and expand
markets for Northwest seafood.
From their vantage point, the
state was harassing the com-
pany and endangering rural
Oregon jobs with a years-long
antitrust investigation.
“I don’t think people appre-
ciate the fragility of the West
Coast processing industry,”
said John Sackton, a market
analyst with Seafood.com in
Boston. “It’s become increas-
ingly difficult for companies
to make money. It takes vol-
ume to earn profits. So there’s
been a lot of consolidation. In a
lot of places in the world
there is just one or maybe
two companies that do all the
processing.”
Expansion mode
The legal morass stymied
Pacific’s expansion drive, until
2015.
That was the year Pacific
paid more than $1 million for
just over half an acre of dilap-
idated Newport bayfront prop-
erty. It bought the parcel from
California Shellfish, parent
company of a competing pro-
cessor, Hallmark Fisheries,
which runs a fish-buying sta-
tion at the site.
Pacific is planning a new,
state-of-the-art processing plant
as well as a commercial devel-
opment that would lease space
to small marine and tourist-re-
lated businesses. It even is
considering a larger attraction
described as the seafood indus-
try equivalent of the famed Til-
lamook Cheese Factory.
Then, Trident decided to
exit Oregon. It dismissed other
suitors interested in the prop-
erties and went to Pacific. In
early April, Pacific closed its
acquisition of the Trident fish
meal plant, which converts fish
waste to fish food.
Days later, Pacific went
public with its possible pur-
chase of the larger Trident pro-
cessing plant.
The Trident plant converts
whiting into surimi, an odor-
less, tasteless fish protein that is
the main ingredient in imitation
crab and lobster.
A processing plant special-
izing in whiting is a vital asset
to Oregon commercial fish-
ermen. While there are other
whiting processors on the coast
— four just in the Warren-
ton-Astoria area — there is a
massive number of whiting off
the Northwest coast and federal
fisheries regulators have set
huge catch limits.
Pacific first went to the whit-
ing fleet to see if they approved.
They gave their unanimous
assent, said Heather Mann, of
the Midwater Trawlers Coop-
erative in Newport. Even Todd
Whaley approved, Mann said.
The Brookings fisherman was
a lead plaintiff in the first anti-
trust lawsuit against Pacific.
Pacific then turned to Salem,
saying it would not go through
with the Trident deal without a
clear signal of support. Specifi-
cally, it asked for a “no-action”
letter from the Department of
Justice.
The agency said it would
need time — eights weeks or so
— to review the Pacific-Trident
deal. Pacific argued it couldn’t
wait that long. The whiting sea-
son opens May 15.
While negotiations con-
tinue, some Newport resi-
dents lament the loss of Tri-
dent. Sara Skamser, whose
company, Foulweather Trawl,
makes commercial fishing nets,
said Trident was a sort of neu-
tral sanctuary. Unlike Pacific,
which tends to cater to the
fishermen it buys from, Tri-
dent would sell ice or bait to
all-comers.
More importantly, Trident
offered an alternative. “Fish-
ermen like choices,” Skamser
said. “And they increasingly
don’t have choices. It’s kind of
hard to see these monopolies.”
Ice has emerged as a major
concern. If Pacific buys the Tri-
dent plant or it closes, Pacific
will be the only company in
Newport able to produce major
volumes of ice.
Fishermen can’t fish without
ice. Jeff Boardman, a shrimper
from Depoe Bay, said when
he goes to sea, he’s got 8 to 9
tons of ice on board. “You get
one company with all the ice
in town, they can control who
fishes and when,” he said.
The Department of Justice’s
response to Pacific may give
heart to the company’s crit-
ics. It laid out a laundry list of
requirements Pacific must meet
to avoid enforcement actions.
Dan Occhipinti, Pacific’s
general counsel, said the com-
pany is mulling the state’s con-
ditions. “Even though DOJ’s
response came in unexpectedly
just hours before the deadline,
we are doing the best we can
to review it in the short amount
of time they have given us,” he
said.
Occhipinti added that
Pacific knows that it can’t sur-
vive without the fishermen. “If
fishermen don’t sell to us, we’re
out of business,” he said. “Our
job is to create better markets.
If we succeed, we increase the
value of the resource and we
can pay fishermen more. Are
there disagreements on price?
Of course, sometimes there are.
But at end of the day, we are all
in this together.”
Sen.
Betsy
Johnson,
D-Scappoose, is among those
trying to broker a peace pact.
She echoes the Pacific talking
point that blocking the Trident
acquisition wouldn’t lessen
Pacific’s dominance.
“Does Pacific Seafood
increase its market share by
buying Trident? You bet.”
Johnson said. “Does the com-
pany increase its market share
by not buying Trident. Yes, it
does.”