House Bill 2737 amends existing law and adds new sections to chapter 69.30 RCW, reenacts and amends RCW 69.30.010, and amends RCW 43.70.250. It requires the secretary of health to set fees to defray program costs for shellfish licensing and related activities but creates specific caps and exceptions to that fee-setting authority. The bill establishes maximum annual shellfish operation license fees by operation type and facility size, caps biotoxin testing fees for companies harvesting species other than geoduck intertidally (by operation type, facility size, and number of harvest sites), and limits export certificate fees to $75. It also exempts fees and surcharges established under chapter 69.30 RCW from the general state policy that licensing program costs be fully borne by licensees. The bill includes statutory definitions relevant to the shellfish industry (for example: department means the state department of health; shellfish covers oysters, mussels, clams, and scallops; shellstock and harvest site are defined; a harvester is limited to growing, placing in containers, transporting within Washington and delivering shellstock to a department-licensed shellfish dealer within four hours of landing). It applies the Section 2 fee caps retroactively to fees and surcharges established under chapter 69.30 RCW on or after February 1, 2026, declares the act an emergency, and takes effect immediately upon enactment. The reenacted/amended RCW 43.70.250 text in the bill also includes limited fee caps for certain certification and renewal fees for certified peer support specialists and substance use disorder professionals or trainees for specified date ranges. The bill affects the Department of Health, the secretary of health’s licensing fee-setting functions, shellfish industry entities (including harvesters, various types of shellstock shippers, shucker-packers, wholesale shellstock shippers, and dealers using export certificates), and references the Department of Fish and Wildlife and fish and wildlife officers. The extracted material does not include the full prior texts of the amended sections or the contents of cross-referenced statutes, it does not provide fee rules for geoduck intertidal harvesters, and several cited statutory exceptions or interactions (for example in RCW 18.130.360, RCW 18.79.202, and other cited chapters) are not included, so the full scope of changes and interactions with existing law cannot be determined from these facts alone.

If enacted, the bill would cap how much the Department of Health can charge many parts of the shellfish industry for licenses, biotoxin testing (for non-geoduck intertidal harvesters), and export certificates (no more than $75). Because those chapter 69.30 fees and surcharges are exempted from the usual rule that licensees must fully pay program costs, shellfish businesses would likely pay less directly but the department would collect less revenue and may have to absorb shortfalls or find other funding; the fee caps apply retroactively to February 1, 2026, so businesses that paid higher fees since then could see reductions or require refunds. The most affected are harvesters, shellstock shippers, wholesale shippers, shucker-packers, and dealers who export. Harvesters also face a practical delivery rule requiring shellstock to reach a licensed dealer within four hours of landing, which limits transport and processing options. The extracted text does not provide the exact fee amounts by operation type or how geoduck harvesters are treated, nor does it show how these caps interact in detail with the other cited statutes, so some implementation details and financial impacts remain unclear.