The legal fight against a planned indoor salmon farm along the lower Susquehanna River has been suspended, potentially clearing a key hurdle for the project.
A Cecil County Circuit Court judge stayed a lawsuit that challenged the wastewater permit for the proposed salmon rearing facility in Port Deposit, MD . The stay came after AquaCon Maryland LLC, the Norwegian company behind the project, requested tighter pollution limits and conditions for the operation to address opponents’ concerns.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and two upper Chesapeake Bay watermen had filed suit in April 2025 challenging the permit issued by the Maryland Department of the Environment. The permit would allow the proposed facility to discharge up to 1.9 million gallons of “purge” water daily into the Susquehanna, not far from where it empties into the Bay.
That discharged water would come from tanks where fully grown salmon are held for several days before being harvested for processing and shipment to market. The holding tanks are used to purge the fish of geosmin, a harmless, naturally occurring organic compound that if not removed can give the fish an earthy odor.
In their lawsuit, the environmental group and the watermen contend that the nutrients, sediment, geosmin and any other pollutants discharged by the facility will cause or contribute to water quality problems downstream, including low dissolved oxygen levels, increased murkiness and algae blooms. They noted that the lower Susquehanna provides spawning and nursery habitat for commercially valuable fish, including striped bass, American shad, hickory shad, alewife, white perch and yellow perch.
AquaCon then asked MDE to modify its permit. It proposed setting a “net zero” limit on suspended solids and adjusting other characteristics of the discharge, including dissolved oxygen and temperature, to improve water quality and reduce possible stress on fish. The company also agreed to closer scrutiny of its plan for offsetting any nutrient pollution the facility might release into the river.
After AquaCon’s request, the litigants agreed to put the lawsuit on hold pending MDE’s issuance of a modified permit. The agency will hold a public hearing once the new permit has been made public, MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said.
I'm willing to bet they won't be appeased. The point is not to clean the Bay, it's to stop any and all industry. Watermelon environmentalists. Green on the outside and red in the middle.
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