An open letter to the Belfast Planning Board

An open letter to the Belfast Planning Board: As members of the Belfast Planning Board, you are facing a decision with grave implications for Belfast, Northport and indeed the entire state of Maine: whether to allow Nordic Aquafarms to build a massive industrial fish farm in Belfast. The City of Belfast website states: “The Planning and Codes Department performs a variety of services intended to protect, maintain, and develop an attractive, safe, and healthy environment.” Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed project does none of this. The Nordic project would daily discharge into Belfast Bay 7.7 million gallons of warm effluent, more than 100 pounds of phosphorous and 1,600 pound of nitrogen, all of which threaten algae blooms and popular recreation sites. This threatens tourism, fisheries, and those industries’ jobs. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than any other marine body of water in the world. Species, including the economically vital lobster, are migrating north. It would be irresponsible to accelerate this warming process. The proposed project would also destroy dozens of acres of beautiful mature forest, wetlands and habitat of at least one threatened species, the extraordinary bobolink bird, which, weighing only one ounce, migrates as much as 12,000 miles a year. The project would disrupt and disburse relatively settled deposits of highly toxic industrial mercury that previously wreaked havoc throughout the entire Penobscot Bay ecosystem, and it would dump mercury-laced sediment atop New Hampshire drinking water. Nordic plans to dig up and truck away thousands of truckloads of carbon-sequestering topsoil and replace it with massive buildings that will sequester no carbon. Nordic plans to burn at least 900,000 gallons of diesel per year. That’s 20,142,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. And that’s just for supplementary power. The project would also use at least 630,000,000 gallons of water from our limited aquifer and watershed, the future of which are already threatened by the climate crisis. As demonstrated repeatedly in other land-based fish farms, there will in all likelihood be problems that will require considerably more water use. Nordic’s water-use projections ignore this. Salmon prices in Europe plummeted 43 percent from mid-June to mid-July, raising profound doubts about the financial viability of this project. What will happen if Nordic is forced to abandon Belfast – after it destroys woods, wetlands and wildlife habitat? So far Nordic has steadfastly refused to post a bond to cover such an eventuality. Two of Nordic’s three existing plants were built in existing industrial areas – the third is small and in a non-recreation area. Nordic’s proposed California plant would be built in an existing industrial site. So too would plants proposed for Bucksport and Millinocket. The Nordic project would degrade the beautiful and beloved Little River Trail by pushing up against it with massive, loud buildings. Thirty-year University of Bergen, Norway professor Are Nyland, perhaps the world’s foremost academic fish farm expert, told me he did not oppose land-based fish farms, but he does oppose such farms built in recreation areas. Nyland said all land-based fish farms should be built in existing industrial areas, not in recreation areas. Nordic promises a tax bonanza, but in Norway, in California and in Belfast, Nordic has taken herculean strides to minimize its taxes and has taken every government dime it can find. It even registered its US operations in Delaware, an infamous tax haven where Nordic has no operations. And jobs? Nordic claims it has hired at least 30 people for Belfast, but very few were living in Waldo County when hired, and many or most of Nordic’s would-be jobs require expertise not found in Maine. Under such circumstances, approving the proposed Nordic Aquafarms project clearly does not “protect, maintain, and develop an attractive, safe, and healthy environment.” But never mind what the City of Belfast website says, I have a 21-year-old son, and I believe we all have a sacred duty to our children and grandchildren to leave them a livable planet. This project betrays that sacred duty. It’s not easy to reject a $500 million project. I don’t envy you. But no one said protecting our precious and vital environment, saving our climate, and safeguarding our children’s future would be easy. Lawrence Reichard Belfast