www.times.org
©2007 Cascadia Times

Order your print copy of "The California Current"

According to the web site opensecrets.org, Pacific Seafood and the West Coast Seafood Processors Association paid the Gallatin Group, a lobbying firm, $1,060,000 on lobbying Congress between 2002 and 2007. Their chief objective: a law that would require the Pacific Fishery Management Council to award seafood processors and fishermen quota shares in the West Coast's groundfish fisheries.

A key target of their lobbying has been Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, a Republican, who sponsored bills to provide quota shares for processors, and $950,000 for a sewage pipe to help the company solve its water pollution woes. The pipe relocated the outfall of Pacific Seafood's waste from the tiny Skipanon River in Warrenton to the Columbia River near Astoria when the project was built in 2006.

While Smith's bill to deliver quota shares to Pacific Seafood, Senate Bill 1549, failed, he did get the money to build the sewage pipe.

Interestingly, one of the Gallatin Group's lobbyists is Dan Lavey, a former member of Smith's Senate staff. Frank Dulcich, owner and CEO of Pacific Seafood, and president of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, was a regular donor to Smith's campaigns for the Senate. Members of Frank's family, and other executives at Pacific Seafood and the WCSPA have contributed at least $45,000 to Smith campaigns.