Nordic Aquafarms’ seven-year quest to build a major recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) salmon farm in Belfast, Maine, came to an end in January 2025, when the company announced it was cancelling its plans after Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled the firm did not legally own a parcel of intertidal land through which it needed to run pipes for the project.
The case was brought before the court by Belfast residents Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace, who argued that they were the rightful owners of the disputed land, which the company had previously attempted to purchase and then sought to claim through eminent domain.
Though the project has been abandoned, tensions continue to run high in Belfast, according to Jacki Cassida, former public relations manager and community liaison for the Nordic project, and Jill Howell, executive director of Upstream Watch, one of the advocacy groups which led the push to stop the project.
Cassida said from the company's perspective, the project’s failure is a missed opportunity for the town.
“The majority of people in Belfast were supportive,” she said. “They were looking forward to the jobs that would be available. I know that learning institutions locally and throughout Maine were looking forward to having an opportunity to learn about land-based recirculating aquaculture by seeing it in action. [There is also] the tax revenue that Belfast would have been able to enjoy. It’s a big loss.”
Howell characterized the community’s response to the proposed project as more divided.
“The community was split over this in a way that’s really unfortunate,” she said. “This is a case of an industry coming in and really dividing a community. Now that Nordic’s gone, there’s still some healing that needs to happen as a result.”
For Howell and others opposed to the project, the issue with Nordic’s proposal mainly had to do with its scale.
“In general, there is a place for aquaculture and meeting the needs for food for humans," Howell said. "Large-scale industrial aquaculture, like what Nordic proposed, is more [part of] an industrial food system that is only harming people and the environment. There’s nothing like what Nordic has proposed [for Belfast] anywhere in the world of this size and scale.”
The initial Nordic proposal outlined a USD 500 million (EUR 485 million), 850,000-square-foot salmon farm to produce 33,000 metric tons of salmon in the town, which has just around 7,000 residents.
When the project was first announced in 2018, it was projected to create 60 jobs within two years and 140 jobs once the operation was fully up and running.
Then-CEO Erik Heim said that Nordic chose the location for its “pristine environment, coldwater conditions, long history as a leader in the seafood industry, and proximity to major consumer markets in the Northeast United States.”
Cassida described the project as mission-driven toward providing a practical and environmentally sustainable solution to the world’s food needs.
In its 17 January 2025 statement announcing the end of the project, Nordic U.S. CEO Brenda Chandler echoed this sentiment.
“Solutions like land-based aquaculture are not just innovative; they are essential," she said. "By cultivating finfish in a controlled, environmentally responsible manner, land-based aquaculture addresses several critical challenges: a reduction of the overall [carbon] footprint; minimizing water usage; reducing reliance on imported seafood; and protecting wild fish populations. At a time when global food security is a pressing issue, projects like this represent a small but impactful step toward a more sustainable future.”
Cassida also said the opposition to aquaculture may have also been …
