Mike Spranger News Today

Prospective kelp growers who want to join the handful of existing commercial seaweed farms in the Pacific Northwest are having to contend with a lengthy permitting process. It's gotten contentious in a few cases, but even so, at least a couple of new seaweed farms stand on the cusp of approval. Their harvests could be sold for human food, animal feed or fertilizer.

There's a rising tide of interest in opening seaweed farms in the Pacific Northwest. If even half of the current applicants succeed, it would more than double the small number of commercial seaweed growing operations in Oregon and Washington state.

There's a rising tide of interest in opening seaweed farms in the Pacific Northwest. If even half of the current applicants succeed, it would more than double the small number of commercial seaweed growing operations in Oregon and Washington state.

By Liz Holbrook Jul 27, 2021 | 8:01 PM Children jump off of a pier into the Biron Flowage near Wisconsin Rapids. (Photo courtesy of Mike Spranger) RHINELANDER, WI (WSAU-WXPR) — People living on flowages in Wisconsin once again have a legal right to extend a pier from their property. That protection had disappeared after a 2018 case before the state Supreme Court. In that case, the Court revoked the right in a case involving a Price County family. Unlike natural lakes, flowage beds...

2:07 People living on flowages in Wisconsin will have to keep waiting for the right to install piers to be protected by state law. A proposed bill to extend pier-placement rights to waterfront flowage owners died in the state legislature this year. In Wisconsin, the land underneath flowages is often privately owned. The Wisconsin Realtors Association fought for a so-called “Protect Our Piers” bill, which would reverse that decision, but it died in the state Senate when COVID-19 hit. “The...