NORTHEAST HARBOR, March 11, 2023 - The Wednesday night “sketch plan review” of proposed “workforce” housing here morphed into an unvarnished, communal inquisition by summer residents into the kind of person who might occupy those units, their character, ability to pay their mortgage and whether they can be trusted to keep trash from burdening our Pleasantville.
Lincoln - I'd second Holly's comments regarding LD586. The land-based aquaculture projects in Maine have inappropriately co-opted the term "Recirculating Aquaculture Systems" (RAS) in a way that's very similar to the way American Aquaculture claimed their ocean-based systems were "closed" despite discharging 4.1 billion gallons of untreated, nitrogen-rich effluent each day. This deceptive PR blitz by the industrial scale aquaculture players in Maine is so unfortunate. Why? Because the technology that's being deployed in Maine does indeed require (as you say) that huge volumes of clean water be pumped from our bays that are subsequently discharged dirtier than before. Fish farms require enormous volumes of pumped water for several reasons. First, the water is heavily oxygenated to support fish respiration. Just like an aquarium, if the pumping stops, the fish die. With the scale of farms increasing exponentially, this requirement for pumped water, and the electricity that pumping requires poses huge risks upon failure. After all, what do you do with 70 million pounds of decaying fish?
Delivering all this power to the pseudo RAS facilities now proposed for Maine has a huge carbon footprint, and along with it, the degradation of both air and water quality. Clearly, the permits to burn fossil-based fuels needed for the required water pumping are simply licenses to pollute our air and water. Next, Maine's current, inappropriately labeled RAS systems require huge intakes and discharges of sea water, to the tune of millions of gallons per day. They also consume, each day, huge volumes of groundwater from local aquifers.
Let's look at the saltwater discharges to our bays first. The second reason these systems pump lots of water (after providing for fish respiration) is to remove waste. Waste comes in many forms. Discharges are dirtier in terms of nutrient load (nitrogen) than the intakes. The nutrient load pollutes our bays and often, it's proven not to flush. And, because the concentrated feeding operations that constitute industrial-scale fish farms are nearly ideal sites for disease propagation, the effluent also contains viral and bacterial loads that are proven to have adverse impact on many wild populations. Add to that the well-documented negative impacts from the discharge of chemicals and veterinary pharmaceuticals that are required to keep farmed fish healthy and you can begin to understand why many people feel the supposedly (but false) "RAS" systems operating or currently planned for in Maine are bad for marine environments and the economies that depend on them. These RAS systems also produce vast amounts of solid waste. Some projects suggest that they'll produce fertilizer from the feces and gutted fish waste. However, in addition to being infused with salt, the feces and guts are considered hazardous waste due to the pathogen loads in farmed fish. Bottom line, these facilities are far from zero-discharge. They degrade our environments and the abundance we rely on in all kinds of ways.
Of course to discharge lots of salt water you need to suck it in first. In addition to water, these enormous intakes also suck up and destroy innumerable quantities of larval-stage organisms that are essential to the healthy ecosystems in our coastal ecosystems.
And then of course, despite the claim of being recirculating RAS systems, the systems proposed for Maine also continually draw incredible amounts of groundwater to support the initial stages of salmon life. That perpetual demand depletes aquifers that would otherwise be available to serve other community needs and a growing population.
It doesn't need to be that way. In contrast to the systems proposed in Maine, there are "true" RAS systems. They are tested and proven. They are in commercial operation now. These are the systems LD586 anticipates. They require no saltwater inputs or discharges. They draw groundwater once and split it into the fresh and saltwater pools required to grow salmon. The only additional water these systems ever require is periodic fresh water to replace the water that was in the tissue of harvested fish. These systems produce zero-effluent in terms of nutrients, viral, bacterial, and pharmaceutical loads (in compliance with LD 586). There are no escapes to dumb-down the fitness of wild populations. They biogas digest the fish feces and guts to produce methane that in turn is burned to produce part of the power for the water pumping required to support fish respiration. The rest of the power to pump water is produced renewably by wind or solar. Most importantly, these systems can be built far from the ocean. That means no diesel fuel is burned by trucks to transport farmed fish to consumer markets. And, in fact, these facilities are designed to meet the consumer demand of a particular locale specifically to eliminate long-distance transportation costs.
Here's the catch. Fish raised in these true RAS facilities costs more. Why? Because the technology produces zero-effluent. It costs money to remove waste. The falsely-labeled RAS systems Maine's becoming familiar with are far from zero-effluent as detailed above. The only reason to build these false RAS systems is that the producers don't have to pay for the pollution these plants produce: the carbon impact, and the air and water degradation from burning fossil fuels, the nutrient, pharmaceutical and pathogen loads, the pollution from processing feces and guts, the carbon impact of transporting fish to markets thousands of miles away, or, for the degradation to larval organisms that are destroyed in intakes. Groundwater is preserved for communities, not squandered by a few. Because of all this, over the long term, the pseudo-RAS systems now propagating in Maine are not sustainable. Maine learned this lesson long ago with timber. While the timber industry produced jobs, the pollution from clear cutting and pulp mills killed many rivers and watersheds and their biological diversity for generations if not forever. We extracted resources until they were gone and, as we did it, we polluted and destroyed the abundance of our ecosystems in the process. We should take stock of that legacy as we consider how aquaculture might unfold in our future. Do we want the long-term abundance of the marine resources the state holds for all in Public Trust? Or will we forsake those resources for the short-term benefit of a few (often foreign) investors that come here to extract and deplete our resources for their own gain?
When Maine thinks about aquaculture, it thinks about selling fish. While that's OK (assuming the use of the "true" RAS technology LD586 anticipates) we should also be thinking of scaling, developing and further commercializing this proven true RAS technology. The world wants sustainably produced food. There's a demand for it. Just look at the exponential growth of more-expensive, but sustainably produced organic produce. Salmon is no different. If Maine catered to this need by selling this technology worldwide, for once we'd be positioned to develop skilled jobs that depend on an educated workforce rather than placing its bets on another polluting, non-sustainable resource-extraction economy that depletes and degrades the pristine abundance that we all have taken for granted for too long in Maine. Maine has the people, the entrepreneurial spirit, the business development and academic skills needed to make this happen. That's what LD586 is all about. Let's do it.
Lincoln - two corrections regarding your most recent writings on LD 586. March 16th is a Thursday not Friday. Second and most important, LD 586 is NOT a bill that " ..is aimed to stop land-based aquaculture in the state". Quite the opposite!
It is a bill that calls for practical rulemaking in order to SUPPORT and ACCELERATE land-based aquaculture in the State of Maine. Land-based aquaculture can and SHOULD be a boon for the State of Maine...instead of a boondoggle. Because of a lack of simple yet practical rules that are the best practices employed by profitable commercial land-based aquaculture facilities in other states and countries, Maine is losing instead of leading. Maine is so well situated to become a leader in this emerging industry, but it must be an ADDITION to our working waterfront.
To do that some simple rules and guidelines need to be in place. By utilizing zero effluent methods that are already raising and selling as much or more fish than any of the needlessly polluting proposals in Maine to date, this new industry can finally get out from under protest, moratoriums and lawsuits. Make no mistake; those protests, moratoriums and court actions have been and will continue to be necessary until such time as those rules are adopted.
Because; needlessly polluting our coastal waters, risking pandemic levels of viral transmission in circulating tidal bays and rivers, further diminishing eelgrass nurseries needed for all shellfish and finfish which also protect our coastlines from impacts of climate change, and not utilizing renewable energy solutions as primary sources, is needlessly counter-productive.
On one hand Maine has spent millions of dollars and countless hours to bring back sea-run fish that can serve as bait and supports sound recreational fishing. Cities and small towns are working so hard to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from their bays and create natural barriers to shoreland erosion. Yet on the other hand the "gold rush" mentality that is driving the permitting of land-based facilities points squarely at the disconnect that exists.
The way to ensure this new commercial enterprise finally gets off the starting block is to put sensible, practical rules in place as the natural resources that it requires are held in PUBLIC TRUST for ALL to utilize. Maine doesn't need or want 5 facilities that don't utilize these best practices, Maine needs 50 facilities or more that do.
i am curious as to why at no point people are not mentioning Mr Rales in all this.He is 365!! He has to “rent out” proposed housing at Heal site, for a tax break. he doesn’t give 2 hoots about our town or its people. let’s not repeat what happenened in Nantucket, where for years he tried to take over island, until they “ threw him out”
He has ruined the David Rockefeller estate, now what will he do to Thompson estate. ?let’s see more research on how he and 365 are trying to force change no one wants, and leave the needed housing issues in the hands of well established Island Housing Trust
Just want to point out that you can't compare short term rentals in large cities with year round demand to here with a rental season of less than half the year. Rentals here are supplemental for owners with other reasons to buy here. There's no financial incentive to buy and maintain a year round house remotely for 6 months income. The number of "investor" owners may be overstated and to solve the issues it's really important to understand what is really going on here. Numbers like the number of listings are not data, they don't tell you anything as the same rental is listed in multiple places at different times. There doesn't seem to be any actual data or specifics to back up the theories. As pointed out in the article, the first step is to actually identify the problem (with data and documentation.) I haven't seen any solid data to help sort through which of the possible causes are the most harmful here. With a need to solve housing issues fast and with limited resources in the towns it's really critical to identify the highest priority problems, the ones having the most impact, in order to focus on those first. It seems like we've missed the first step which would be to take the list of most likely causes that everyone is talking about and gather some real data quickly to see which one or two of them is the highest priority to deal with to get results quickly.
Concerning the cruise ship passenger limit >>> lt is not called "politricks" for nothing. lf you don't think it is a alive and well and living in Bar Harbor, l know of an excellent deal on a 44 room bed and breakfast.
Just a note, since this story is framed as summer ppl v year rounders (which is not the case). The petition in support of the MDI 365 project is a “summer” person, and it was signed by many who do not live full time on MDI.
NEH and all its issues is a great preview of what is going to happen to the Island as a whole, and eventually Trenton/Ellsworth if we keep ignoring the fact that tourists and summer people are ruining the area. This already happened to my hometown and it's hard to watch it happening here.
Lincoln - I'd second Holly's comments regarding LD586. The land-based aquaculture projects in Maine have inappropriately co-opted the term "Recirculating Aquaculture Systems" (RAS) in a way that's very similar to the way American Aquaculture claimed their ocean-based systems were "closed" despite discharging 4.1 billion gallons of untreated, nitrogen-rich effluent each day. This deceptive PR blitz by the industrial scale aquaculture players in Maine is so unfortunate. Why? Because the technology that's being deployed in Maine does indeed require (as you say) that huge volumes of clean water be pumped from our bays that are subsequently discharged dirtier than before. Fish farms require enormous volumes of pumped water for several reasons. First, the water is heavily oxygenated to support fish respiration. Just like an aquarium, if the pumping stops, the fish die. With the scale of farms increasing exponentially, this requirement for pumped water, and the electricity that pumping requires poses huge risks upon failure. After all, what do you do with 70 million pounds of decaying fish?
Delivering all this power to the pseudo RAS facilities now proposed for Maine has a huge carbon footprint, and along with it, the degradation of both air and water quality. Clearly, the permits to burn fossil-based fuels needed for the required water pumping are simply licenses to pollute our air and water. Next, Maine's current, inappropriately labeled RAS systems require huge intakes and discharges of sea water, to the tune of millions of gallons per day. They also consume, each day, huge volumes of groundwater from local aquifers.
Let's look at the saltwater discharges to our bays first. The second reason these systems pump lots of water (after providing for fish respiration) is to remove waste. Waste comes in many forms. Discharges are dirtier in terms of nutrient load (nitrogen) than the intakes. The nutrient load pollutes our bays and often, it's proven not to flush. And, because the concentrated feeding operations that constitute industrial-scale fish farms are nearly ideal sites for disease propagation, the effluent also contains viral and bacterial loads that are proven to have adverse impact on many wild populations. Add to that the well-documented negative impacts from the discharge of chemicals and veterinary pharmaceuticals that are required to keep farmed fish healthy and you can begin to understand why many people feel the supposedly (but false) "RAS" systems operating or currently planned for in Maine are bad for marine environments and the economies that depend on them. These RAS systems also produce vast amounts of solid waste. Some projects suggest that they'll produce fertilizer from the feces and gutted fish waste. However, in addition to being infused with salt, the feces and guts are considered hazardous waste due to the pathogen loads in farmed fish. Bottom line, these facilities are far from zero-discharge. They degrade our environments and the abundance we rely on in all kinds of ways.
Of course to discharge lots of salt water you need to suck it in first. In addition to water, these enormous intakes also suck up and destroy innumerable quantities of larval-stage organisms that are essential to the healthy ecosystems in our coastal ecosystems.
And then of course, despite the claim of being recirculating RAS systems, the systems proposed for Maine also continually draw incredible amounts of groundwater to support the initial stages of salmon life. That perpetual demand depletes aquifers that would otherwise be available to serve other community needs and a growing population.
It doesn't need to be that way. In contrast to the systems proposed in Maine, there are "true" RAS systems. They are tested and proven. They are in commercial operation now. These are the systems LD586 anticipates. They require no saltwater inputs or discharges. They draw groundwater once and split it into the fresh and saltwater pools required to grow salmon. The only additional water these systems ever require is periodic fresh water to replace the water that was in the tissue of harvested fish. These systems produce zero-effluent in terms of nutrients, viral, bacterial, and pharmaceutical loads (in compliance with LD 586). There are no escapes to dumb-down the fitness of wild populations. They biogas digest the fish feces and guts to produce methane that in turn is burned to produce part of the power for the water pumping required to support fish respiration. The rest of the power to pump water is produced renewably by wind or solar. Most importantly, these systems can be built far from the ocean. That means no diesel fuel is burned by trucks to transport farmed fish to consumer markets. And, in fact, these facilities are designed to meet the consumer demand of a particular locale specifically to eliminate long-distance transportation costs.
Here's the catch. Fish raised in these true RAS facilities costs more. Why? Because the technology produces zero-effluent. It costs money to remove waste. The falsely-labeled RAS systems Maine's becoming familiar with are far from zero-effluent as detailed above. The only reason to build these false RAS systems is that the producers don't have to pay for the pollution these plants produce: the carbon impact, and the air and water degradation from burning fossil fuels, the nutrient, pharmaceutical and pathogen loads, the pollution from processing feces and guts, the carbon impact of transporting fish to markets thousands of miles away, or, for the degradation to larval organisms that are destroyed in intakes. Groundwater is preserved for communities, not squandered by a few. Because of all this, over the long term, the pseudo-RAS systems now propagating in Maine are not sustainable. Maine learned this lesson long ago with timber. While the timber industry produced jobs, the pollution from clear cutting and pulp mills killed many rivers and watersheds and their biological diversity for generations if not forever. We extracted resources until they were gone and, as we did it, we polluted and destroyed the abundance of our ecosystems in the process. We should take stock of that legacy as we consider how aquaculture might unfold in our future. Do we want the long-term abundance of the marine resources the state holds for all in Public Trust? Or will we forsake those resources for the short-term benefit of a few (often foreign) investors that come here to extract and deplete our resources for their own gain?
When Maine thinks about aquaculture, it thinks about selling fish. While that's OK (assuming the use of the "true" RAS technology LD586 anticipates) we should also be thinking of scaling, developing and further commercializing this proven true RAS technology. The world wants sustainably produced food. There's a demand for it. Just look at the exponential growth of more-expensive, but sustainably produced organic produce. Salmon is no different. If Maine catered to this need by selling this technology worldwide, for once we'd be positioned to develop skilled jobs that depend on an educated workforce rather than placing its bets on another polluting, non-sustainable resource-extraction economy that depletes and degrades the pristine abundance that we all have taken for granted for too long in Maine. Maine has the people, the entrepreneurial spirit, the business development and academic skills needed to make this happen. That's what LD586 is all about. Let's do it.
Lincoln - two corrections regarding your most recent writings on LD 586. March 16th is a Thursday not Friday. Second and most important, LD 586 is NOT a bill that " ..is aimed to stop land-based aquaculture in the state". Quite the opposite!
It is a bill that calls for practical rulemaking in order to SUPPORT and ACCELERATE land-based aquaculture in the State of Maine. Land-based aquaculture can and SHOULD be a boon for the State of Maine...instead of a boondoggle. Because of a lack of simple yet practical rules that are the best practices employed by profitable commercial land-based aquaculture facilities in other states and countries, Maine is losing instead of leading. Maine is so well situated to become a leader in this emerging industry, but it must be an ADDITION to our working waterfront.
To do that some simple rules and guidelines need to be in place. By utilizing zero effluent methods that are already raising and selling as much or more fish than any of the needlessly polluting proposals in Maine to date, this new industry can finally get out from under protest, moratoriums and lawsuits. Make no mistake; those protests, moratoriums and court actions have been and will continue to be necessary until such time as those rules are adopted.
Because; needlessly polluting our coastal waters, risking pandemic levels of viral transmission in circulating tidal bays and rivers, further diminishing eelgrass nurseries needed for all shellfish and finfish which also protect our coastlines from impacts of climate change, and not utilizing renewable energy solutions as primary sources, is needlessly counter-productive.
On one hand Maine has spent millions of dollars and countless hours to bring back sea-run fish that can serve as bait and supports sound recreational fishing. Cities and small towns are working so hard to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from their bays and create natural barriers to shoreland erosion. Yet on the other hand the "gold rush" mentality that is driving the permitting of land-based facilities points squarely at the disconnect that exists.
The way to ensure this new commercial enterprise finally gets off the starting block is to put sensible, practical rules in place as the natural resources that it requires are held in PUBLIC TRUST for ALL to utilize. Maine doesn't need or want 5 facilities that don't utilize these best practices, Maine needs 50 facilities or more that do.
i am curious as to why at no point people are not mentioning Mr Rales in all this.He is 365!! He has to “rent out” proposed housing at Heal site, for a tax break. he doesn’t give 2 hoots about our town or its people. let’s not repeat what happenened in Nantucket, where for years he tried to take over island, until they “ threw him out”
He has ruined the David Rockefeller estate, now what will he do to Thompson estate. ?let’s see more research on how he and 365 are trying to force change no one wants, and leave the needed housing issues in the hands of well established Island Housing Trust
Just want to point out that you can't compare short term rentals in large cities with year round demand to here with a rental season of less than half the year. Rentals here are supplemental for owners with other reasons to buy here. There's no financial incentive to buy and maintain a year round house remotely for 6 months income. The number of "investor" owners may be overstated and to solve the issues it's really important to understand what is really going on here. Numbers like the number of listings are not data, they don't tell you anything as the same rental is listed in multiple places at different times. There doesn't seem to be any actual data or specifics to back up the theories. As pointed out in the article, the first step is to actually identify the problem (with data and documentation.) I haven't seen any solid data to help sort through which of the possible causes are the most harmful here. With a need to solve housing issues fast and with limited resources in the towns it's really critical to identify the highest priority problems, the ones having the most impact, in order to focus on those first. It seems like we've missed the first step which would be to take the list of most likely causes that everyone is talking about and gather some real data quickly to see which one or two of them is the highest priority to deal with to get results quickly.
Concerning the cruise ship passenger limit >>> lt is not called "politricks" for nothing. lf you don't think it is a alive and well and living in Bar Harbor, l know of an excellent deal on a 44 room bed and breakfast.
Just a note, since this story is framed as summer ppl v year rounders (which is not the case). The petition in support of the MDI 365 project is a “summer” person, and it was signed by many who do not live full time on MDI.
NEH and all its issues is a great preview of what is going to happen to the Island as a whole, and eventually Trenton/Ellsworth if we keep ignoring the fact that tourists and summer people are ruining the area. This already happened to my hometown and it's hard to watch it happening here.