Nordic Aquafarms has requested the Maine Department of Environmental Protection pause permit deadlines for its planned salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Belfast, Maine, U.S.A., as it continues to face several legal challenges.
In a release on 7 April, the company announced it is asking the DEP to suspend its permits to let multiple court decisions on property issues raised by project opponents play out. The company, which announced the large aquaculture project in January 2018 and originally said it hoped to have production start in 2020, has faced a barrage of legal challenges to its development.
Nordic Aquafarms CEO Brenda Chandler said the proposal prevent the company's permits from expiring as the court challenges are resolved.
“This pause will allow the courts to fully adjudicate the issues raised by project opponents without allowing the delay caused by the endless litigation to run the clock on the permits,” Chandler said in a release. “Nordic remains committed to providing a locally grown, sustainably produced source of healthy protein in this community.”
The company recently lost a court battle over land crucial to its plans as the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of project opponents – Jeffrey R. Mabee and Judith B. Grace – on ownership rights to key intertidal land. The ruling found the land Nordic was planning to use for its inflow and outflow pipes was not owned by the company, and was instead owned by Mabee and Grace.
That land dispute has been further complicated by the City of Belfast – which has voted in support of the project – proposing to use eminent domain to seize the property the company needs for its project. The use of eminent domain has been challenged in court.
The eminent domain case is just one of many court challenges that the company is facing. Currently, there are at least seven separate court actions related to the project, targeting either the company, the Maine DEP, or the City of Belfast.
Among these is a lawsuit contending the 12.5-acre piece of land that Nordic plans to build on has restrictions from earlier deeds prohibiting commercial development on the site.
“We assert that those restrictions (which include a prohibition on any buildings on the parcel and a requirement to keep the parcel in its natural condition) are still in place based on the deeds,” Mabee and Grace's attorney, Kim Ervin Tucker, told SeafoodSource.
According to the lawsuit, the deed to the city states that conditions and restrictions “run with the land” and were “binding on the City of Belfast, its successors, and assigns,” and the Waldo County Registry of Deeds (WCRD) – the county in which the project would be built – has no record indicating that those requirements have changed.
“There is no recorded instrument in the WCRD [Waldo County Registry of Deeds] indicating that the Belfast Water District was ever released from the conditions and restrictions in the 1973 state-to-city deed by a governor’s deed,” the lawsuit states.
The city later gave the land to the Belfast Water District, and that deed also contains no indication that the land was released from its restrictions, according to the lawsuit. As a result, the lawsuit claims, the deed from the Belfast Water District to Nordic Aquafarms continues to carry restrictions – meaning the permits that Nordic acquired related to the project were given on the false assumption the company had the rights to develop the land.
“The 2018 and 2022 deeds of vacation were solicited, executed, and/or recorded by the City of Belfast to facilitate Nordic obtaining permits, licenses, and leases from local, state, and federal regulators under false pretenses and in the absence of Nordic having the legal right and/or title, right, or interest (standing) to develop the land proposed for development and use in the manner Nordic proposes,” the lawsuit states.
Other ongoing legal actions regarding Nordic's project include disputes over the validity of some of the company’s permits in light of the recent land ownership ruling; whether the company’s access to submerged land where it plans to route its inflow and outflow pipes; pending appeals on deadline amendments on DEP permits; and pending damage claims from Mabee and Grace.
Photo courtesy of Nordic Aquafarms
