Land Based Salmon Plan in Belfast

by Paul Molyneaux

Clean Water, A Lot For Little

A Norwegian based company, Nordic Aquafarms (NAF), has begun the process of building the world’s largest land based salmon farm near Little River Reservoir, in Belfast, Maine. As farmers need fertile soil to grow crops, so fish farmers need clean water. Whether in a net pen in the ocean or a tank on land, aquaculture requires an abundant supply of clean water, preferably free. “Believe me, we’ve been looking all over the place. It wasn’t easy to find what was needed,” Nordic Aquafarms CEO, Eric Heim has said on several occasions.

Belfast draws its water from wells, according to Keith Pooler, superintendent of the Belfast Water District, and NAF has agreed to buy 100 million gallons a year for the next six years. “Basically they’ll be paying $200,000 for 100 million gallons a year,” said Pooler. “But that won’t meet all their needs and they are actively looking for other sources. They’re applying for a permit for an intake from the bay.”

According to Thomas Kittredge, Belfast’s Economic Development Director, the town is putting $20,000 into a study of the reservoir, which no longer supplies Belfast and could be part of the NAF supply system.

Salmon require about ten times their finished weight in primary production inputs, wild fish and farmed plant material, such as GMO soybeans rich in oleic acids. That all goes into the salmon as feed and comes out again in the form of feces that has to be flushed out of the fish tanks, the largest of which will hold 2 million gallons of water.

“In our case, we filter out feed particles, feces and any other biological matter in the discharge. In addition, we reduce phosphorous by ninety percent and nitrogen by fifty percent,” Heim has told Ron Huber. However, the remaining fifty percent of the nitrogen, from a proposed 66 million pounds of salmon, still represents a hefty nutrient load for the local ecosystem to process.

While land based fish farming avoids issues such as escapes and the introduction of parasites and pathogens from the wild, there will inevitably be disease issues. “Disease is the bottleneck every aquaculture industry has to go through and they all know it,” Canadian biologist Dougie McIntosh said years ago, prior to Maine’s failed investments in cod farming. It remains true today. While NAF has kept its Danish facility disease free for the last three years, it requires a high level of vigilance.

Investment

Nordic Aquafarms, the State of Maine, and the City of Belfast have proposed an initial investment of $150 million in the facility to be constructed on forty acres that Nordic Aquafarms would purchase, with a possible build out to $400 million or even $500 million.

That $150 million “is the number we’re looking at,” said Kittredge. “That will broaden our tax base and make NAF the biggest taxpayer in the city.”

Capital investment on the part of Nordic Aquafarms, along with inputs, such as feed, and labor, represent the biggest costs involved in salmon farming. Holding those costs down is vital to turning a profit, and water has to be available at low cost.

If all goes well, water from Belfast’s supply will help generate millions of dollars of wealth, the flow of which is as important as the flow of water, and the town has agreed to invest another $220,000 in land purchase and water dechlorination to help get the salmon project off the ground. Belfast has not, to date, performed an economic analysis of the flow of wealth through the community, or asked for any guarantees of job creation or retention.

Depreciation

Former World Bank Economist Herman Daly, in looking at the use of natural resources held in the public trust—such as ground water and aquifers—has noted that elected and appointed regulators may allow a private company like Nordic Aquafarms to utilize public resources as part of the companie’s productive capital. According to Daly the depreciation of productive capital such as pumps and filters that get worn out in the process of growing fish, the depreciation of clean water will not be entered in Nordic Aquafarm’s books. The ecosystem and the residents of the host community will bear the cost of depreciation of their water. According to Daly, the refusal to include the cost of depreciating natural resources is what allows many industries to show a profit.

Land based fish rearing offers an opportunity to utilize wastewater as fertilizer for agriculture, a version of a sustainable system developed in China 4,000 years ago. But Nordic Aquafarms appears to embrace a food in—waste and salmon out industrial model where nutrient rich water becomes a problem rather than an asset, according to Daly.

Questions Going Forward

There is money to be made in salmon farming, apparently, but before supporting this project people need to ask, does the profit come from ignoring costs? If so who will bear those costs. Are the promises of jobs, taken on faith, enough to compensate Belfast for the surrender of resources as precious as clean water? And is the generation of more food for the well-fed worth the sacrifice of so much crop land and wild fish that could actually feed the world’s hungry?

According to a press release on 2/23/18, another company has announced plans to build a land based salmon production facility in Bucksport, Maine at the head of Penobscot Bay.

Paul Molyneaux has researched and written about fin fish aquaculture around the world for over 20 years.