MACHIASPORT – Representatives of two Maine salmon aquaculture companies said Wednesday that they’d rather be penalized by the U.S. District Court judge who found them in violation of the Clean Water Act than negotiate with the environmental groups that sued them.

David Peterson, Atlantic Salmon of Maine chief executive officer, and Shirley Roach-Albert, Stolt Sea Farms vice president of East Coast operations, said their companies would go out of business if they met all the criteria that U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the New England Law Center imposed earlier this month in an out-of-court settlement with Heritage Salmon Inc.

“A penalty can’t be worse when you look at everything they want us to do,” Roach-Albert said.

Of chief concern to both companies is the environmental organizations’ demand that they stop using salmon brood stock that was bred from European salmon.

The European-strain salmon that both companies use in their Maine salmon farms was developed over more than a decade and grows to market size more quickly than North American salmon, allowing the companies to compete with the farmed salmon that is grown in Norway, Scotland and Chile, they said.

Taking any fish with European genes out of the water would result in an immediate shutdown of their Maine salmon farms because there aren’t enough North American salmon to replace them, they said.

Peterson and Roach-Albert were responding to the June 18 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Gene Carter, who affirmed a Feb. 20 recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Margaret Kravchuk. Kravchuk recommended that Atlantic Salmon of Maine, Stolt Sea Farm and Heritage Salmon Inc. be found in violation of federal law because the companies do not have pollution discharge permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

U.S. PIRG and NELC filed the suit two years ago, maintaining that the three salmon companies are violating the Clean Water Act because they don’t have a permit to discharge pollutants, such as fish feces, feed, antibiotics and non-North American-strain salmon, into state waters.

EPA did not require National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits for salmon pens when salmon farms first came to Maine in the late 1980s. In January 2001, EPA delegated the NPDES permitting authority to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

Dennis Merrill, an environmental specialist with DEP’s Bureau of Land and Water Quality, said Wednesday that the department put out a preliminary draft permit in April and is reviewing comments on the proposal from industry and environmental groups.

In her Feb. 20 recommendation, Kravchuk noted the EPA’s lack of a discharge permitting program for salmon pens, but said “government inaction” cannot be used to discredit citizen suits because such a defense would defeat the whole purpose of such suits.

On June 4, two weeks before Carter’s ruling, Heritage Salmon, a division of Connors Aquaculture, reached a $750,000 out-of-court settlement with U.S. PIRG and NELC. As part of the settlement, Heritage agreed to grow only North American salmon, limit the density of fish in its pens, increase environmental monitoring and not use fish antibiotics.

David Nicholas, NELC senior attorney, said Tuesday in a press release that if Heritage can take “serious measures to reduce pollution, Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt can, too.”

“Their continuing refusal to do so is inexcusable,” Nichols said.

Peterson said Heritage’s situation differs from that of Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt because Heritage never applied for a federal discharge permit. Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt Sea Farm applied for the permits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he said.

Peterson and Roach-Albert said many of the measures to which Heritage agreed already are standard practice in their own Maine farm operations, including the prohibition on using antibiotics as a preventive measure.

Peterson said his company discussed the use of European strain salmon during a May 14 meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, the two federal fishery agencies that declared wild Atlantic salmon in eight Maine rivers as an endangered species in 2000.

In making the decision to list the fish, the two fishery agencies identified potential genetic interactions between escaping farmed salmon and the few remaining wild fish as one of the threats to the wild fish.

Peterson said Atlantic Salmon of Maine has agreed not to import any new non-North American strain salmon and is working to breed back as much North American strain as it can to existing brood stock. It will take time, but it will reduce the perceived risk of escaped farmed salmon interacting with wild fish, he said.

Roach-Albert and Peterson said they are committed to continuing to work in good faith with state and federal agencies, but are opposed to NELC acting as a regulatory body.

“We understand we can’t have an adverse effect on the environment,” Peterson said. “No business can operate that way, today.”

Hearings on the monetary penalties for Atlantic Salmon of Maine and Stolt Sea Farm and required remedies have not been scheduled.