Hearing on irrigation permit denied

The state Land Use Regulation Commission decided Thursday not to schedule a public hearing on a request by Cherryfield Foods Inc. to renew the company’s permit to irrigate more than 6,000 acres of blueberry land in Washington County.

Katherine Carroll, manager of LURC’s permitting and compliance division, said five LURC commissioners attended Thursday’s meeting in Augusta and all voted against a hearing. Commissioners Jackie Webber and Mary Beth Dolan did not attend the meeting, Carroll said.

Three people from Washington County had requested a public hearing on the application, but LURC staff recommended that the commission deny those requests because they did not meet the criteria for public hearings – “The likelihood that information presented at the hearing will be of assistance to the Commission in reaching a decision.”

The hearing requests were submitted by Alan Lewis, a professor of ecology at the University of Maine at Machias; Nancy Oden of CLEAN: Maine in Jonesboro; and Laura Falk of Machias.

In recommending that no hearing take place, LURC staff cited the extensive testimony offered during last year’s public hearing on Cherryfield Foods’ application for the 2000 irrigation season and the detailed environmental monitoring LURC and its consultants conducted during water withdrawals last summer.

The company owns more than 8,000 acres of blueberry land in the watersheds of the Machias, Narraguagus and Pleasant rivers – three of eight water bodies where Atlantic salmon are listed as an endangered species.

The new application includes some changes, including extending the water withdrawal season so it begins May 1 rather than June 1 and changing the permit period from one year to five years.

Some organizations that are submitting comments on the application, including Trout Unlimited, the Atlantic Salmon Federation and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, are questioning the effect of May water withdrawals on Atlantic salmon

All three organizations were intervenors in the company’s 2000 application, and their initial comments on this year’s application also question some of the pumping and monitoring data collected by Cherryfield Foods last year.

Marcia Spencer Famous, LURC’s project director for the Cherryfield Foods application, said the commission still is scrutinizing the data.

Gordon Russell, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – one of the two federal agencies that listed the salmon as endangered – said Thursday his agency doesn’t see May withdrawals as a problem so long as the company doesn’t exceed the in-stream flow limits developed as part of the water-use management plan.

The plan, which is expected to be completed within the next month, originally was part of the Maine Atlantic salmon conservation plan and will provide guidance on water withdrawals to protect salmon, he said.

Part of developing the water-use management plan included a scientific analysis of the flow rates that are necessary to protect Atlantic salmon in the three Down East rivers.

Russell, who has reviewed the Cherryfield application, said the company appears to be embracing the spirit of the water-use management plan, which is to move away from direct irrigation withdrawals from the salmon rivers.