Nordic Aquafarms Inc. is just a month away from submitting permits to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for its proposed Belfast, Maine-based salmon recirculating aquaculture system.
Nordic Aquafarms is planning a USD 500 million (EUR 444 million) salmon RAS system that could produce as much as 33,000 metric tons of salmon annually. The company announced the plans back in January 2018, and has since been working toward submitting permits to the relevant regulatory agencies.
In advance of submitting the permits next month, the company held a meeting on 26 March to review the permit applications with the surrounding community and go over any questions from residents. The meeting drew both supporters and detractors who came out in record numbers to the standing-room-only meeting.
“It was a very good meeting last night, record attendance,” Marianne Naess, commercial director for Nordic Aquafarms, told SeafoodSource.
The company has had to face opposition from some local residents, some of which ran for – and lost out on – positions on Belfast city council. While the opponents were still present at the meeting, according to Naess the balance had shifted towards support more than in the past.
“In contrast to earlier meeting there were a lot of people that supported it. I would say of the people who actually asked questions and spoke up, 75 to 80 percent were supporters,” she said. “There is a growing group of supporters that feel the opposition has gotten too much attention.”
People opposing the project did attend, but according to Naess many of the issues they presented had been heard before.
“The questions from the opposition weren’t anything new, it wasn’t anything that we hadn’t answered before,” she said. “It was a shift towards support.”
In advance of the meeting, Nordic released a lengthy fact sheet covering the information that would be included in the company’s permit application, and some answers to common concerns from residents. The sheet covered by-products, discharge and wastewater disposal, noise, odor, routes of intake and discharge pipes, project phasing, and more.
Nordic has also been seeking regulatory changes for its by-products, in the hopes that by-products like salmon heads, viscera, and other cut-offs can be used as lobster bait in light of recent fears of a bait shortage for the state's largest seafood industry.
According to Naess, the company is planning to submit permits to the city – such as building permits – and to the army corps of engineers around the same time as their submission for the Maine DEP next month.
