Army Corps of Engineers also will put the salmon farm proposal through a “vigorous” review that will continue to allow for public feedback. Mary Erin Casale, spokeswoman for American Aquafarms, said Friday that the Maine DEP meeting on Thursday was just one step of that agency’s review process, and that the state Department of Marine Resources and the U.S. Representatives from Acadia National Park, Frenchman Bay United, Island Institute, National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Oceana, Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, the Sierra Club and the town of Sorrento also spoke in opposition to the proposal. Other concerns raised during the meeting include the use of large amounts of diesel fuel to run generators that would produce electricity for all the motorized equipment on site, medicine and chemicals used to treat salmon that become sick or are afflicted by parasites, and greater potential for harmful algal blooms caused by increased nutrients and phosphates in the bay. “Under no circumstances should this application proceed,” Randi Spivak of the Center for Biological Diversity told DEP officials. Many also said that models of currents in the bay show that very little water gets flushed out of the bay during the tidal cycle, which means that whatever byproducts or additives remain in the discharged water will circulate for extended periods in the bay, affecting its water quality. More than 4 billion gallons of treated wastewater would be pumped from the pens into the bay every day and, if something should go wrong with the efforts to contain the fish effluent or to keep the fish healthy, the impact on the communities surrounding the bay would be widespread.īecause of the size of the project, the company’s approach to treating fish excrement before releasing water into the bay should have to meet state standards as a solid waste facility - something that would never be approved in the middle of Frenchman Bay, more than one speaker said. But critics of the project have said the technology has not been proven to be effective, and that the scale of the proposal is unprecedented and poses a threat to the ecology of Frenchman Bay.
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