A Chilean environmental NGO is taking aim at alleged salmon overproduction at AquaChile farming sites in an investigation it said will unveil "a new type of environmental non-compliance" by Chilean salmon farms.
Through a series of documents published on its website and in local publication Ciper the NGO, Fundación Terram, accused AquaChile of exceeding its limits of salmon production by more than 73,000 metric tons (MT) during 30 production cycles. This allegedly took place at seven of the firm’s concessions located in the Las Guaitecas National Reserve and two in Isla Magdalena National Park in the southern Aysén region of the country.
Salmon overproduction at farming centers is detrimental for several reasons, according to the NGO, but one relevant reason to this case is that increased production results in an increase in the amount of organic matter – including nitrogen and phosphorus – entering the water column and falling to the seabed at a farm, decreasing the available oxygen and altering ecosystems, particularly those of high environmental value such as natural reserves.
According to the NGO, any aquaculture project with production surpassing their originally established limits by 35 MT per year must be environmentally evaluated by authorities; in addition, if it is located in a protected area, it must undergo an Environmental Impact Study (EIS).
AquaChile’s concessions in question were being processed when Chile’s Environmental Assessment System (SEIA) entered into force in 1997. However, the Chilean Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Subpesca) and the Undersecretariat for the Armed Forces granted the concessions without requiring an environmental assessment, Fundación Terram said.
Years later, AquaChile increased its production without presenting the modified plans under the SEIA framework, the NGO asserts.
As a result, Fundación Terram gathered evidence and delivered it to the Superintendence of the Environment (SMA) and the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) for review.
“We have just submitted a request for a pronouncement from this entity to determine the legality of the Subpesca pronouncements in relation to the production limits established in the technical projects,” Fundación Terram Lawyer Diego Rojas said.
In its documentation, the environmental NGO highlighted that a 2001 ruling by the Chilean Comptroller General found that all applications for aquaculture concessions and adjustments to those concessions must be environmentally assessed and approved by relevant environmental authorities, regardless of the original date of submission.
“This journalistic investigation seeks to unveil a new type of environmental non-compliance of the salmon industry within protected areas, in this case specifically of AquaChile, in producing thousands of tons [of salmon and] circumventing the SEIA,” Fundación Terram journalist and researcher Maximiliano Bazán told SeafoodSource.
The idea behind the NGO’s strategy is to initiate sanctioning procedures as established by the SMA’s Organic Law, Bazán said, adding that precedent had already been established for this type of strategy in a similar case against operations of fellow salmon-farming firm Cooke Aquaculture in Laguna San Rafael National Park.
In that case, Cooke argued that rules have been changed capriciously since it originally won the concessions in the 1990s, explaining that minimum levels of production established in original concessions were subsequently turned on their heads by the SMA and established as the maximum amount of production allowed.
“The SMA unilaterally and retroactively changed the criteria, without coordination with other state agencies, and decided that technical projects would no longer be a production minimum, but now a maximum, despite the fact that that word has never appeared or been used in the technical project of the center in question,” Cooke Aquaculture Chile CEO Andrés Parodi said earlier this year.
Fundación Terram said it does not believe AquaChile can make the same argument as Cooke.
“In the case of eight of the nine AquaChile centers included in this research, their first production cycles never exceeded the threshold established in their technical projects, which makes it clear that this figure operated as a maximum production limit and not a minimum,” the NGO said in its documentation. “Otherwise, these concessions should have been revoked for not respecting the authorized minimum – something that did not happen [either] with the two Cooke Aquaculture centers that are subject to the sanctioning procedure.”
Fundación Terram previously denounced AquaChile production at its two centers in Isla Magdalena National Park, and the SMA said it had requested information and was in the process of analyzing it.
“What the investigation reveals are the legal breaches of the salmon industry in Chile, in addition to the weakness of the bodies in charge of supervising and sanctioning,” Bazán told SeafoodSource. “In this sense, Fundación Terram looks to audit industry actions and the state bodies in charge of enforcing the law, all in order to protect the country's natural heritage.”
AquaChile declined to comment when contacted by SeafoodSource regarding Fundación Terram’s allegations.
This case follows several others in which environmental authorities in Chile have reviewed and/or sanctioned salmon-farming firms accused of overproduction, including Australis, Multi X, and Nova Austral.
