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Key points – Nordic Aquafarms in Belfast, Maine

• Production of fresh seafood close to consumers in NE USA.
• Production takes place in protected systems, using tools like a high quality custom conveyor belt, well pumps installed by experts who provide well pump service in Snohomish, WA, and indoors in tanks (with RAS – recirculating aquaculture systems).
• Traceability with process from egg to fish out the door in one location.
• The farm in Belfast will be delivered by one of the most experienced RAS companies in the world – Nordic Aquafarms – that already has three farms in operation.
• Proven strong environmental profile with best in class technologies.
• The largest seafood investment and a major seafood employer in Maine when in operation. Wide economic development benefits for Maine.
• Proven high quality products will be branded with Maine origin.

What is the opportunity?

An opportunity for Belfast and Maine to take a big step forward as an aquaculture producing state. With land-based fish farming technology, Maine can grow this industry with a strong sustainability profile while they also use the best business automation processes to make everything even more effective. The project in Belfast will further strengthen Maine´s position as a premier salmon producing state, currently limited to a few net pens.

The Nordic Aquafarms opportunity in Belfast, Maine involves a 500 million USD investment, making it one of the largest investment projects in Maine.

With COVID 19 heavily impacting the economy in Maine and the US, investment and jobs are more important than ever. This is an opportunity to secure a large investment – a green investment providing high-quality food to Americans.

Why is this salmon farm important for the US, Maine, and Belfast?

• The US has a large and growing seafood deficit. Domestic wild catch and production is not close to meeting demand. Domestic production is a food security issue.
• Local production with a chain of custody and traceability helps educate consumers about where its seafood originates.
• The Co2 footprint per pound salmon in Belfast will be less than half of fresh wild salmon airfreighted from Alaska or other countries to the US East Coast – the primary sources of salmon in the US.
• Processing and value-added in the US – a significant portion of US seafood is exported for processing and then reimported.
• US authorities recommend seafood as an important part of Americans´ diet for health purposes. The US has a low seafood consumption per capita compared to many western countries. Salmon is a high-growth product in the US.
• With new sustainable production companies, Maine can leverage its strong seafood reputation to achieve growth.
• The Belfast operation will drive industry value chain development, and thus also overall infrastructure and industry growth. The result will be a more attractive state for seafood companies to invest in.
• For Belfast, there is the benefit of investment and jobs, and it will be the home of a new generation of sustainable seafood production. Nordic Aquafarms is a high-profile company internationally that has put Belfast on the industry map.
• An opportunity for Maine and Belfast to demonstrate the highest sustainability standards in the international aquaculture industry.

Benefits of Nordic Aquafarms solutions

• All production occurs indoors with little noise, smell, or impact to surrounding environment. Unlike other forms of aquaculture, we do not place our production in public waters – it is on private property.
• The fish are grown in a protected environment, thus greatly reducing exposure to parasites, disease, or other risks in the ocean. The fish welfare benefits are strong.
• The facility is designed to eliminate escape risk and co-mingling with wild species.
• The facility uses mostly seawater, thus reducing the need for larger volumes of freshwater. Water is recirculated and treated which means overall water use is greatly reduced compared to other approaches.
• Nordic Aquafarms treatment of residual discharge is designed to meet the strictest discharge standards. 99 percent of most nutrients and particles are filtered out and recycled down-stream. 85 percent of nitrogen is also removed. These metrics are the best in the industry. Traditional aquaculture releases all particles and nutrients to receiving waters and can spread parasites and disease.
• Modern salmon aquaculture in the Northern hemisphere has almost eliminated antibiotics use. Our farms do not use antibiotics.
• Unlike most RAS companies who rely on vendors, Nordic Aquafarms has its own experienced team of experienced RAS designers and engineers. That means an experienced, agile, and quality focused approach that combines production and design experience under one roof to achieve seamless solutions.

Benefits of this investment for Maine and Belfast

• One of the largest capital investments in Maine, and the largest in Waldo county.
• 5 percent of US salmon consumption on 35 acres private property.
• Funds to upgrade the aging Belfast water infrastructure as a result of deal with the Belfast Water District.
• Significant tax revenue flow in the future for Belfast – assessed by city counselors to be greater than the next 100 Belfast companies combined.
• 170 direct new jobs in Maine – all FTEs with competitive pay and benefits.
• Millions of USD already spent in Maine, and 10 people already employed.
• Many construction jobs in Maine for years to come, including from Maine companies.
• Likely more business for local Belfast companies – ranging from restaurants to other services.
• Sales and growth opportunities for various suppliers in Maine.
• Many indirect job effects up- and down-stream in the value chain over time.
• Work force development programs in aquaculture – NAF will be working with academic institutions and other organizations.
• Opportunity to pursue commercial-scale research for academic institutions.
• Opportunity to strengthen Maine as a destination for seafood investment – throughout the value chain.
• Added visibility of the Maine seafood origin brand with new high-quality products.
• A success story for Maine in the big-league aquaculture industry – and an opportunity to further bolster its marketing of Maine as a place to invest.

About the product

• Nordic Aquafarms does not use antibiotics in its farms.
• In feed, the standard is GMO avoidance.
• Growth hormones are not used in Salmon aquaculture.
• Use of natural antioxidants from which salmon also gets is delicate color.
• Quality standards and experienced staff result in excellent fish welfare.
• The salmon is harvested and processed on location resulting in high quality and freshness benefits.
• Our salmon farming practice is certified by the international Global GAP program and is subject to independent sustainability audits.
• Salmon aquaculture feeds minimize fish products in feed mix and have replaced them with plant-based proteins and agriculture by-products.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who is Nordic Aquafarms?

• Founded by an American citizen – Erik Heim – in 2014 in Norway.
• A company backed by some of Norway´s most reputable investors, with likely addition of US investors in the future given our expansion plans here.
• Significant grant awards from Norwegian and Danish environmental authorities.
• Only international RAS company with three commercial RAS farms in operation.
• Only international RAS company producing and selling two species – Atlantic Salmon and Yellowtail Kingfish – with high marks on quality.
• Only international RAS company with full certification for two species: Atlantic Salmon and Yellowtail Kingfish (ASC and Global GAP).
• Among top two internationally in active RAS production capacity: close to 3000 mt.
• Currently active in four countries with growing position in the US that includes three office locations in Maine and California.
• US headquarters in Portland, Maine.
• The company has distinguished itself by an experience-based down-to-earth approach in the RAS segment, high fish welfare standards, and also leadership on environmental technologies.
• Nordic Aquafarms is in a unique position to scale with experienced production and engineering teams internationally, and proof of concept in production.
• The company has 65 + employees internationally – far more than any other RAS company considering Maine.
• The company has never experienced escape incidents, major die-offs, or major incidents in its operations. Quality management is a cornerstone in the company.

 

 

As permits are starting to come in for our Maine RAS development, our science is backed-up by leading scientists in Maine as reflected in the attached article. Great care has been taken to minimize environmental impacts through robust sustainability measures.

This article comes after the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, University of New England, the Conservation Law Foundation, and other respected institutions have thrown their support behind the quality of the project in Belfast, Maine.

The long-term benefits of the chosen site in Maine are significant, but has also involved permitting complexities such as access to bio-secure fresh water, coasting engineering, and green field development. Green field development has involved a longer permitting process compared to our other brown-field sites in Europe and the US. In Maine, the best option was a greenfield site. Permits are due to be issued a little over a year after applications where submitted early summer 2019.

Nordic Aquafarms remains one of the most experienced players in the RAS market with three farms in operation. We have one of the largest RAS projects in the US ready to go in Maine with permits. Over 150 new jobs in Maine coming up and significant investment benefits for the state. A similarly sized facility is now trailing close behind Maine in Humboldt, California.

The strong Maine seafood brand is a strong fit with a high-quality seafood product. Nordic Aquafarms has already proven it produces one of the best salmon products in the market in Norway – currently sold in Norway and Europe.

To read the article in the Bangor Daily News, please click on the link below. A text version is available for anyone unable to access the link. 

As Belfast fish farm awaits final OKs, environmental scientists explain what’s at stake

As Belfast fish farm awaits final OKs, environmental scientists explain what’s at stake

by Abigail Curtis

July 6, 2020

BELFAST, Maine — Two and a half years after Norway-based Nordic Aquafarms announced that it plans to build one of the world’s largest indoor salmon farms near the Little River in Belfast, the $500 million project is in a waiting game.

Officials from Maine Board of Environmental Protection, the Bureau of Public Lands and the Belfast Planning board are still considering whether to issue operating permits for the project, which plans to produce 72.7 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually for consumers in the northeastern United States.

The project has been mired with substantial legal challenges that have yet to be resolved and its timeline remains uncertain.

While the boards and courts deliberate, here is a closer look at three environmental questions raised about the proposed facility.

How would the fish farm affect the bay?

Up to 7.7 million gallons of wastewater per day will flow from a pipe under Route 1 and tidal mudflats before it’s discharged into Belfast Bay.

The wastewater will be highly filtered and sterilized. Still, as much as 407 pounds of tiny suspended solids and 356 pounds of biochemical oxygen demand, which can decrease water quality, will go into the bay every day. The daily discharge also would contain up to 13 pounds of phosphorous and 1,480 pounds of nitrogen, a nutrient that can overstimulate the growth of algae.

Damian Brady is an associate professor at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, who has spent a lot of time monitoring the water quality of Penobscot Bay. He also has worked with companies that have proposed similar recirculating aquaculture systems, though he hasn’t worked with Nordic.

Brady said almost all of the discharge will be dissolved before making its way into the bay.

“Fish waste makes it sound like the extra fish guts, or extra pellets of feces in the water,” Brady said. “It’s not. That stuff is retained. It’s valuable.”

Damian Brady is an associate professor at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences. Credit: University of Maine

But even dissolved nutrients can alter the environment, which is one reason why the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has monitored the nutrient levels in water closely since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. Nitrogen, especially, is a problem because too much of it can lead to dead zones.

“In salt water, nitrogen is often the limiting nutrient,” Brady said.

Maine doesn’t have any dead zones, partly because of its relatively cold ocean water and large tides. But if there were no regulations, there likely would be a dead zone near Bucksport because of the paper companies that discharged pollution into the Penobscot River for years, Brady said.

Still, opponents of the fish farm fear the daily stream of effluent will damage the fragile ecosystem that has begun to heal from the decades when Belfast’s chicken processing plants dumped waste into the city’s bay. They also are concerned the effluent will linger in one place, potentially raising the water temperature of the nearby bay.

But those fears may be unfounded, Brady said.

“I don’t think anyone can say that a single discharger within Belfast Bay will degrade the water quality of Penobscot Bay writ large,” he said.

Here’s one way to think about it: Belfast Bay encompasses roughly 8.5 square miles, with about a 10-foot tidal range. A lot of water moves in and out all the time, he said, so the daily effluent won’t oversaturate the bay.

“People hear 7 million gallons per day, and it sounds like a big number — and it is a big number,” Brady said. “But it’s small relative to the tidal exchange.”

Other scientists have illustrated the relationship of this dynamic as one drop of water in a 5-gallon bucket.

“The solution to pollution is dilution, as they say, and that’s a lot of dilution,” Brady said. “I just absolutely cannot foresee it causing a temperature change in Belfast Bay. Physics would tell me it’s impossible.”

While the Maine Department of Environmental Protection is tasked with ensuring Nordic and other land-based aquaculture companies have robust, transparent monitoring programs in place, Brady said those worried about the government’s ability to be an effective watchdog can join citizen science efforts, such as the Maine Coastal Observing Alliance, to help independently monitor the bay.

“If this is the project that gets people more interested in preserving water quality in this area, I think there’s indirectly a pretty good thing going on,” he said.

What about mercury?

Maine is still grappling with the environmental aftermath of HoltraChem, the now-defunct chlor-alkali plant in Orrington that discharged as much as 12 tons of toxic methyl mercury into the Penobscot River decades ago.

This 2018 map from the Penobscot River mercury study shows how far the mercury traveled: upriver all the way to Eddington, and downstream to Frankfort, Bucksport, Verona Island and beyond. Lobsters caught in the area from Cape Jellison in Stockton Springs to Perkins Point in Castine contained high enough mercury concentrations that the state closed a total of 12.5 square miles to lobster and crab fishing, although the levels were still less than the amount found in a can of albacore tuna.

Some opponents of the Nordic Aquafarms project fear disastrous consequences, if mercury that has settled along the ocean floor dislodges during the excavation of the intertidal zone that’s needed to lay pipes for the project.

But Larry Mayer, professor emeritus of oceanography at the University of Maine, said that more mercury is likely to be found in quiet waters with fine-grained mud on the bottom — such as the Passagassawakeag River valley in Belfast — than the area near the proposed fish farm.

“The Little River is small, so I would doubt there is enough place for fine-grained mud to deposit,” he said.

Nordic officials testified to the Board of Environmental Protection that two samples of marine sediment collected in November 2018 near its proposed pipeline site contained concentrations of mercury that are well within state and federal environmental standards.

Nordic plans to dispose of any potentially toxic dredge material from the construction of its pipes by barging it to Mack Point in Searsport, where it will be transferred to dump trucks bound for a mainland landfill. Transporting that sediment upstream has caused concern for some, but not Mayer.

“To me, the liability is in the different direction,” he said. “If I were Nordic, I would worry more about stuff being dislodged upstream and getting into the feed waters for my [downstream] salmon operations.”

He feels there’s a more serious threat that this would happen in Bucksport, where Whole Oceans, another proposed land-based salmon farm, has already received its construction permits with far fewer challenges from the public. Bucksport is closer to the HoltraChem site, which is subject to big washouts.

“All it takes is that once-in-a-decade storm to erode a bank up at the HoltraChem site and flush out a big pile of that stuff the same day the salmon farms are filling up their tanks,” he said. “If I was selling salmon out of either of those two places, but especially Bucksport, I would want to watch the feed water and have some quality control on my product to make sure it’s going out without mercury in it.”

Is there enough freshwater to support the demands of the fish farm?

When it’s fully built, the Nordic Aquafarms facility will use nearly roughly 1,205 gallons of freshwater per minute drawn from three sources: the Belfast Water District municipal supply, onsite groundwater wells and surface water from Belfast Reservoir No. 1, a 55-acre containment pond near the mouth of the Little River.

Keith Pooler, the longtime superintendent of the Belfast Water District, said that before agreeing to sell Nordic as much as 500 gallons of water per minute, the district made calculations based on scarce water supplies from 2001, a record drought year in Maine. It found there is more than enough water to meet the demand.

“We used the worst case scenario to come up with a safe year,” he said.

Hydrologist Andrew Reeve, a professor in the University of Maine’s School of Earth and Climate Sciences, independently reviewed one of Nordic’s groundwater modeling reports. He had been contacted by people concerned the project would affect wetlands and surface water, causing nearby wells to run dry or suffer from saltwater intrusion.

While no model can be perfect, Reeve said Nordic put forth a “good effort” to present reasonable data to the public — though acknowledged that hasn’t eased fears for the staunchest critics of the project.

“It’s almost like people decide what they want, and decide which model matches what they want, instead of doing it the other way,” he said.

The scientists at Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Maine Geological Survey do a good job monitoring water levels and quality, Reeve said, but watershed or riverkeeper groups should also independently monitor the data.

Professor Andrew Reeve of the University of Maine’s School of Earth and Climate Sciences. Credit: Andrew Reeve

“It’s in Nordic’s interest to have a sustainable water supply, but I’ll quote Ronald Reagan and say, ‘Trust, but verify,’” he said. “I would certainly have local community involvement, or somebody else looking over [the company’s] shoulder,” he said.

The BEP (Board of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection) held deliberations on Nordic Aquafarms´ state permit applications on Wednesday May 20^th. Nordic Aquafarms is very pleased with the BEP deliberations. DEP staff presented the different issues well, and Nordic commends the board for having valuable discussions while finishing the session in just one day.

“It has been a long journey and I want to thank our employees, the DEP staff and our advisors for their efforts in the permitting process” says Erik Heim, president of Nordic Aquafarms Inc. “We also want to thank the BEP for its thorough processing of the applications based on facts and science.

Nordic Aquafarms is satisfied with the permit conditions discussed during the deliberations. Nordic is also pleased to announce that it has improved the discharge technology further since submitting the MEPDES application in the fall of 2018 and is comfortable with the potential permit conditions that will be proposed by the DEP. Nordic has developed the highest ocean protection standards in the industry with higher nutrient removal and biosecurity measures than any other farm in operation today.

The majority of the residents of Belfast, as well as all the elected officials, have supported the project all along. Local supporters have formed support groups and gone to great lengths to provide accurate information based on science and facts to the community. Nordic Aquafarms wants to thank its supporters and the group “The Fish Are Okay” in particular for their support.

A few local opponent groups have tried to derail the process with claims of the applications being incomplete, by arguing the need for additional studies well beyond the required regulations and by frivolous lawsuits claiming that Nordic does not have a lawful access to the bay for its intake and discharge pipes. Their attempts to derail the BEP process have been unsuccessful.

The current situation with COVID-19 and disruptions in international supply chains shows the importance of producing high quality food close to the consumers and underscores the importance of this project both to Maine and the US, Heim says.

Nordic is now looking forward to the draft permits being issued and for other permits to come to a conclusion in the near future.

Permits that were deliberated:

• MEPDES – discharge permit
• SLODA – site law permit
• NRPA – natural resources permit
• Air Emissions – minor air emissions permit

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