USDA details plans for fish research facility

SULLIVAN – People interested in the well-being of Taunton Bay got a direct report Tuesday from a federal official on what exactly his department has in mind for a 27-acre piece of shorefront property in Franklin that the government bought this past spring.

John Crew, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service in Philadelphia, told members of the Friends of Taunton Bay that the department wants to work with the University of Maine in researching ways to best raise marine life in captivity. Crew addressed the group at its annual meeting Tuesday night at Sumner Memorial High School in Sullivan.

Plans for the construction of a USDA fish research facility on the site were announced last March. Crew said the goal of the department is to determine how to breed halibut, Atlantic salmon, and cod in land-based operations and to pass that information on to aquaculture companies.

In pursuing this goal, he said, USDA plans to spend $25 million in Orono, where the main campus of the University of Maine is located, and in Franklin, where the university owns a fish farm, to build research facilities. The university bought a former commercial fish farm at auction in 1999 in Franklin for $400,000.

By constructing research laboratories adjacent to university sites where similar research is being conducted, Crew said, the government hopes to maximize the potential for collaboration between the two research entities.

“That provides a certain amount of critical mass,” Crew said. The university and USDA will be able to share ideas, equipment and infrastructure at the two sites, he said.

Crew said that USDA plans to have 14 scientists and three times that amount for total employees in the two locations.

“Between the two sites, we’ll have a total of 45 people,” Crew said. He said he expects eight scientists to work primarily in Orono and six to work primarily in Franklin.

Of the $25 million USDA plans on investing in the sites, $13 million of it will be spent in Orono, primarily on a 30,000 square-foot laboratory-office building, according to Crew. The department has preliminary plans to spend $12 million in Franklin on four separate buildings that would be built next to the existing university facility, he said.

USDA officials hope to start construction of the Franklin project in 2003 and have the facility complete by 2005, the official said.

Crew said USDA did not consider building its facility at the proposed research center at Schoodic Point, which is being pursued by the National Park Service, because military facilities generally are not easily converted into research laboratories. The park service is taking over the Schoodic Point facility from the Navy, which has operated a base at the site since 1935.

“It’s like trying to turn a pig’s ear into a silver purse,” Crew said.

Nick Brown, operations manager of the University of Maine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin, said that the university also decided against the Schoodic site because of the extensive renovations that would be required.

“You couldn’t economically retrofit,” Brown said.

The Franklin site was appealing because it is relatively close to Orono, enabling scientists to teach a class on the campus and conduct research on Taunton Bay in the same day, Brown said. Also, the facility in Franklin would cost $2.5 million to build from scratch, he said.

The university plans to build a commercial-grade hatchery at the site and to research aquaculture techniques primarily for halibut and, possibly other species as well.

The USDA primarily will use salt water from Taunton Bay in conducting its research, but will use some fresh water in cultivating salmon, Crew said. Juvenile salmon live in fresh water but migrate into the oceans as they become adults. The salt water will be recirculated several times before it is cleaned and returned to the bay, he said.

The department is conducting engineering tests for fresh water sources at the site, according to Crew. Neighbors will be contacted by the project engineers so they can have the water flow rates of their household wells figured into the engineering data, he said.

“I understand the sensitivity of the wells,” Crew said. “We strive to be a good neighbor in that regard.”