Nordic Aquafarms received a necessary National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for its planned recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in California, roughly a month after it lost access to land it needed for a similar planned facility in Maine.
The company announced in a release that the North Coast Regional Water Quality Board, one of nine regional water quality boards in the U.S. state of California, granted the NPDES permit via a unanimous vote. The permit awards co-permittees Nordic Aquafarms California and the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation district rights to discharge wastewater into Humboldt Bay.
“We are hoping to be in front of the Coastal Commission this November and continue the positive momentum,” Nordic Aquafarms CEO Brenda Chandler said.
The latest permit continues the company’s drive to establish a RAS facility on the U.S. West Coast, Sandler said.
Originally planned as a salmon facility, the company announced earlier this year that it is changing to grow yellowtail – a move that won local approval earlier this year.
“This summer Nordic’s application had also been approved by the CDFW to raise yellowtail kingfish and with each successful step, we look forward to beginning construction and becoming operational,” Chandler said.
The successes in California come as the company continues to face an uphill battle in constructing its planned RAS facility in Belfast, Maine. Since it announced the project five years ago, Nordic Aquafarms has been embroiled in several lengthy court battles. Earlier this year, the company faced a decision from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that removed its claimed rights to intertidal land where it was planning to build a discharge pipe.
In response to the decision, Nordic Aquafarms requested the Maine Department of Environmental Protection pause permit deadlines as it continued to face yet more legal challenges. The pause, Chandler said in April, was intended to allow the courts time to adjudicate the numerous disputes surrounding the company's plans.
On 7 September, the company was hit with another setback when its Submerged Lands Lease Application, which would allow it to locate and maintain effluent discharge outlets, has been rescinded by the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry’s Bureau of Parks and Lands (BPL), which oversees all access to the state’s submerged coastal land.
According to a release from the bureau, it originally intended to grant a lease to the company because Nordic claimed it had sufficient right, title, and interest to the upland property adjacent to the littoral zone in which the company sought its lease. With the ruling by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, however, the company lost that right.
The actual owners of the land – per the court decision – are Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace, and they conveyed a conservation easement assigned to the Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area, which precludes industrial development. The easement prohibits any structures for commercial purposes – including the inflow and outflow pipes necessary for Nordic’s RAS facility.
As a result of the legal changes in ownership, the bureau ultimately decided to rescind its final decision to issue a submerged lands lease to Nordic Aquafarms.
“As to Nordic’s request that the bureau toll the final findings for an indefinite period of years, neither the bureau’s submerged lands leasing statute ... nor the Chapter 53 Rules expressly authorize the director to suspend his decision to issue submerged lands conveyances and the bureau declines to do so,” the decision said.
For opponents of the project, the bureau’s decision is a victory that could lead to further consequences. Andrew Stevenson, press liaison for the Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area, said soon after the decision that other permits – such as Nordic Aquafarm’s effluent discharge permit – are based on the company holding a submerged lands lease. Now, the Maine Board of Environmental Protection could follow the bureau’s lead and rescind its permits.
“Like BPL, the department and the board must review the impact of the Law court’s February 2023 title claims decision on the permits and licenses BEP granted Nordic in 2020,” Stevenson wrote. “Will they come to the same conclusion?”
Image courtesy of Nordic Aquafarms
