SHELLFISH CASE
Background
In May of 1989, Puget Sound area Indian Tribes filed suit in federal District Court claiming treaty rights to take shellfish from all public and privately owned beaches in Western Washington State. The State of Washington Attorney General's office was defending only public beaches and United Property Owners intervened in the case to defend our private property against tribal claims to permanent, paramount easements across our lands to reach private beaches.

As we stand on the brink of a new millennium, United Property Owners is starting a new chapter in the history of our organization. In the decade since our founding in 1989, we have achieved the majority of our goals and objectives relating to defeating the Tribes' claims to 24-hour per day, 365 day per year unrestricted access to our tidelands and to come down our driveways and cross through our yards to get to our beaches.

As it stands now, tribal members do not have the right to cross private property to reach the tidelands when ever and where ever they wish. Instead the court ruled that they must reach the beach only by water, public road, or public right-of-way during daylight hours with 30-day advance notification. Only if it can be proved that there is no reasonable water or public access can the tribes go to the Federal Court to obtain advance permission to cross private upland property. Our lawyers remain confident that permission will not be granted since, to our knowledge, there are no tidelands in the Case Area to which there is no reasonable boat or public right of way access. Further, the "Time, Place, and Manner" restrictions we were successful in obtaining from the Court are so burdensome (according to the Tribes) as to make it not worth their while to pursue digging shellfish on most private residential beaches that do not contain easily harvestable commercial volumes of shellfish. We believe that the majority of Washington tideland owners will never see tribal digging on our beaches.