Fishing Ban Puts Towns In Dire Straits -- Businesses Foundering In Clallam Bay, Sekiu

CLALLAM BAY, Clallam County - For decades, this hamlet and neighboring Sekiu west of Port Angeles drew their lifeblood from timber and fishing.

First timber hit the skids. Now the plug has been pulled on salmon fishing.

That's been hard on people like Newsom Baker, whose house overlooks the hamlet on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He owns a gas station and until recently had a grocery.

Crown Zellerbach's logging division moved out of Clallam Bay in 1981. Then came logging restrictions to protect the northern spotted owl.

"After Crown Zellerbach left, the biggest employer was the school," Baker said. "I had to lay off about 30 people then."

Then fishing seasons were shortened as salmon runs declined.

"Two years ago, they shut off the September fishing," he said. "Last year they closed down both ends of the season, so basically we had only about a six-week season."

The two short seasons cut grocery sales by about $1 million, and the store went bankrupt.

On May 1, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife decided to close the strait to recreational salmon fishing through October.

Baker gave up and closed the business.

At the 25-year-old Van Riper's Resort in Sekiu, there are 17 motel units, room for 150 tents or recreational vehicles, moorage for about 300 boats and 40 rental boats.

On typical days in summers past, as many as 1,200 people hovered about the place, operator Chris Mohr said. This year, he and his

wife, Valerie, had a hard time deciding whether to open.

"There's not a chance of making any money, but what else are we going to do? If we can cut the losses by 10 percent, that's 10 percent less loss," Mohr said.

The entire complex is up for sale.

"We've had a couple of people - Canadians - come through here and want to buy our boats. They read about our dire straits, and wanted to buy 'em for nothing.

"I'd make planters out of 'em," Mohr said, "before I'd give 'em away to some Canadian company."

He found the offer especially aggravating because Canadians catch hundreds of thousands of Washington coho and chinook a year off the west coast of Vancouver Island, some from runs that the fishing closure is meant to protect.

Moreover, the U.S. shutdown means a bonanza for resorts on the Canadian side, where fishing still is open.

"Five years ago we were on top of the world," Mohr said. "Everything we made we were dumping back in for improvements.

"If a guy had known, he'd have been putting it someplace for a rainy day."

Nearby in Sekiu, the Strait Side Resort remains closed. Ditto for the Trading Post, a general store and six- to eight-unit motel, and Cain's Marine Service, a branch of a Clallam Bay business. Curly's Resort has opened only its motel rooms.

Ron Little, 68, owner of The Cove, said his monthly payroll for the motel, restaurant, lounge and moorage facility in a normal summer is $30,000.

"There's no way the few people out here for bottom fishing are going to generate that kind of money," he said.

After 24 years in business The Cove, too, is closed, but Little says he still must spend $33,000 on taxes, utilities, mortgage, license fees and insurance, which has actually risen because the building is vacant.

"I thought I'd sell this place some day and retire," he said. "Now I can't give it away."

Arlen Olson's family has operated Olson's Resort at Sekiu for 60 years. There are 45 motel units, 250 RV sites, moorage for more than 300 boats.

He said he spent $50,000 on moorage floats, plumbing, trailer park improvements and a laundromat before being told there would be no season.

"I just sold a $140,000 home, a rental unit, to pay some bills," Olson said. "It was worth $175,000, but what do you do when you're shut down?"

Local people lobbied hard to land a state prison in the mid-1980s, but of the 400 people who work at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center, fewer than half live nearby.

Most commute from Port Angeles or Forks.