A Norwegian aquaculture company looking to build an indoor salmon farm in Maryland faces a legal challenge to its proposed location along the lower Susquehanna River.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and two upper Chesapeake Bay watermen filed suit April 21 in Cecil County Circuit Court challenging a wastewater discharge permit granted to the planned facility by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).
AquaCon Maryland LLC plans to produce up to 20,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon a year at the $320 million facility it proposes to build at a former naval training center in Port Deposit, Maryland.
This is the Norwegian company’s second attempt to open a salmon farm in Maryland. In 2022, it withdrew a bid to build in Federalsburg on the Eastern Shore amid concerns from environmentalists, scientists and local residents that its plan to discharge into Marshyhope Creek could harm Maryland’s only known spawning reach for endangered Atlantic sturgeon, as well as other fish.
AquaCon says its salmon will be produced sustainably on land using a “recirculating aquaculture system,” with hatchery spawned fish raised in recycled-water indoor tanks. The biological waste they generate will be converted to energy to help run the operation.
For the Port Deposit location, MDE gave final approval March 5 for AquaCon to discharge up to 1.9 million gallons of “purge” water daily into the Susquehanna. Purge water comes from tanks where fully grown salmon are briefly held before being harvested for processing and shipment to market. While free of fish waste, the water would contain geosmin, a naturally occurring organic compound that, while harmless to consume, can give farmed fish an earthy odor.
Before the water is discharged, the company plans to filter it and treat it with ultraviolet light to kill bacteria. The MDE permit sets water quality thresholds for the discharge, and it requires the company to offset the nutrient levels in the released water. It also requires the facility to monitor geosmin in its discharge for three years to ensure the levels being released are no higher than what’s normally found in the river.
But the Bay Foundation and the two watermen—Steve Lay of Havre de Grace and Blair Baltus of Essex—say the facility’s discharges of nutrients, sediment and other pollutants will cause or contribute to water quality problems downstream, including low dissolved oxygen levels, increased murkiness and algae blooms.
I would be inclined to trust MDE.
The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: In & Out up at The Other McCain.
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