Beaumont State Rep Files Oyster Reef "Land Grab" Bill
Last week, just before the filing deadline, state Rep. Joe Deshotel (D) filed House Bill 3335, a bill innocously described as "relating to the regulation of oyster resources." However, there's a lot more to HB 3335 than that. With this bill, the lease for a controversial project, viewed by supporters as an attempt to save the Texas oyster reefs and by opponents as a bid to control the bulk of the Texas oyster reefs, could become legal.
We're talking about Sustainable Texas Oyster Resource Management, commonly known as STORM.
STORM is the brainchild of Tracy Woody and his father-in-law Ben Nelson, the owners of Jeri's Seafood, a company that oysters from Smith Point, as we wrote in a feature story earlier this year. Back in early 2014, Woody and Nelson set up a separate company, Sustainable Texas Oyster Resource Management (aka STORM). Then they obtained a 30-year lease through the Chambers-Liberty Counties Navigation District for more than 23,000 acres of submerged land in Trinity and Galveston bays. And then, after they had secured the lease, Woody and Nelson started informing the other oystermen who held oyster reef leases in those waters that STORM now held the rights to that submerged land and the oyster reefs on it.
Since then there's been a bitter and public fight between Nelson and Woody and the rest of the oystermen, including the Halili family, owners of Prestige Oyster Company. Woody will tell anyone who asks that both he and Nelson knew going into this deal that it would be controversial. Woody had lawyers tear the lease contract apart and examine it from every angle before he filed the lease to make sure it would hold up in the inevitable court battle that is coming.
Read more: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/news/2015/03/storms_oyster_bill_got_filed.php
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