A state Department of Health official told The Record recently that of the 18 shellfish protection districts formed in Washington over the years, not a single one has ever been dissolved. Even those that have seen dramatic improvement remain in place, though they are now classified as being inactive.

The problem? One of the primary roadblocks it seems is that state law doesn’t specify how to do away with these emergency-response districts once they’ve been created. How, when and why to form them, yes, but not what to do once the job is done.

While shellfish protection districts provide an important, if not vital function in the seemingly never-ending fight against pollution and the safeguarding of our marine fisheries, this is disappointing news. Ultimately, it means that no matter how hard a community works to rectify its water quality issues, they’ll never see the payoff of having the district dissolved. It’s a race with no finish line, a sentence with no end. As one county official accurately said, it’s a “black eye” that tells the rest of the state that Whidbey is polluted when it’s not.

It’s particularly unfortunate in Freeland, as the story of Holmes Harbor is largely one of success. Nearly a decade ago, water quality samples revealed high levels of fecal coliform bacteria in the water, resulting in a ban on swimming and shellfish harvesting. The county and community have since turned the situation around, except for rare and rogue spikes found in samples during the height of summer, when rainfall is at a low and any sources of pollution are concentrated.

The kicker is that it’s not even clear if the source of the problem is man-made or from Mother Nature. The prevailing theory is that the offending samples are the result of wrack, the reeking mass of seaweed that accumulates in monstrous levels on the beach and cooks in the sun during the same time of year. Apparently there still isn’t enough evidence to definitively prove once and for all that the wrack is the source of the ongoing problem, no matter how much common sense would suggest it is. The spikes remain a state Department of Health concern, as officials believe it’s evidence that Island County still has work to do.

Just as puzzling is the continual maintenance of a shellfish protection district when the prevailing species it’s now protecting is varnish clams, an invasive species that is out-competing native species such as Manila clams. They moved in while the area was closed to shellfish harvesting — the same period when county officials were working to clean up the harbor to save the shellfish fishery.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of semantics, just a name that many now don’t even remember exists, but we don’t think so. Water quality in Holmes Harbor was once so bad that the Island County commissioners were required by state law to take emergency action. The crisis is over, yet the stain remains. If state law really doesn’t provide the framework for dissolving shellfish protection districts, perhaps it’s not Island County that still has work to do but the state.