Voters in the town of Jonesport, Maine, U.S.A. have approved an extension to the amount of time Kingfish Maine has to start its planned recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility.
Kingfish filed its first permit applications for a land-based RAS in Jonesport in 2020. The company has been working on plans to build a RAS that could produce 6,000 to 8,000 metric tons (MT) of yellowtail annually upon completion, and first detailed plans of its project in November 2019.
Since that time it has had to fight court battles over its permit process, and has successfully won multiple challenges to its permits. An attempt to place a moratorium on construction to stop the project was overwhelmingly rejected by residents in a vote.
While the lawsuits were ultimately unsuccessful, they managed to delay the project by four years.
“Now, with the appeals behind us, the project timeline will be determined by current economic and financial conditions, which we are assessing at this time,” Kingfish CEO Vincent Erenst said in 2025.
The company was running up against a potential snag, as some of the approvals granted to it by the town of Jonesport were set to expire. In a town meeting on 5 August, voters heavily approved granting the company an extra 30 months to start the project.
According to a town employee, all articles related to the Jonesport Kingfish Maine project were approved by a “two-thirds majority or more,” and it faced “little discussion and little opposition.”
Under the amended ordinance, Kingfish is being granted a reprieve on certain “substantial start” requirements that would have meant it needed to have 30 percent of the project completed by a certain date. Now, it will count if the company has begun physical work on the site, and if the “actions taken go beyond preliminary steps, showing a clear progression towards fulfilling contractual and regulatory obligations.”
