BEP schedules hearings on fish farming rules

The Board of Environmental Protection will be going on the road to learn how Maine people feel about fish farm regulation.

The citizen group that acts as the enforcement arm of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was charged with designing criteria for a permit to demonstrate that finfish aquaculture operations are not polluting Maine’s water.

A public hearing will be held at the Machias Motor Inn in Washington County at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6. An additional two-day hearing will follow at the Spectacular Event Center in Bangor, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, and continuing on Wednesday, Feb. 12, as needed.

The board denied a request Thursday to delay the hearings by a month, to give environmental groups more time to gather information about fish farming.

Although aquaculture has been a legal business in Maine for nearly 20 years, fish farms had never been required to acquire discharge permits under the federal Clean Water Act. Maine didn’t think such permits were necessary, and federal environmental regulators did not enforce the rule.

A successful lawsuit, filed against industry leaders by a coalition of environmental groups, however, said such permits are necessary. In response, the federal Environmental Protection Agency gave the state jurisdiction to design a means of regulating water contamination.

The Board of Environmental Protection took over the project at the request of DEP regulators in September 2002. The board’s formal procedures provided a better avenue for all the interested parties to become involved, the state said.

In November, the board identified 15 intervening parties, which have been grouped into industry, environmental and local government interests. They will be permitted to submit expert testimony and to cross-examine witnesses of other intervenors.

The parties must submit their initial testimony to the board by Jan. 13, and they have until Feb. 3 to rebut the arguments made by the other parties. Open public hearings will follow.

Yet the eight environmental groups believed that this tight schedule didn’t allow sufficient time to collect all the necessary data about Maine aquaculture.

“For 15 years, these companies have been operating without permits – we’re only asking for an additional 30 days,” said Bruce Merrill of the National Environmental Law Center.

The environmental groups also asked the board to issue subpoenas to Maine’s fish farms asking them to turn over the details of their day-to-day operations, such as the type and amount of feed used, the type and amount of chemicals used, fish density, and a number of other facts.

Both requests were denied, but the board did direct Maine’s Department of Marine Resources to turn over the past five years’ records of environmental monitoring at aquaculture operations. Any communication between the department and aquaculture companies regarding environmental monitoring also will be made available to the environmental groups, said Cynthia Bertocci, executive analyst for the board.

With the DMR data and the detailed information that environmental groups had collected about Stolt Sea Farm, Heritage Salmon and Atlantic Salmon of Maine in the course of the lawsuit, the board believes the groups have sufficient data to prepare their testimony, she said.

Elizabeth Butler, a Portland-based lawyer who represents two major aquaculture facilities, spoke on behalf of the industry.

“This is a performance-based permit. We just have to set the limits,” she said Friday. “They have more than enough information.”

Merrill disagreed, saying Friday that the best management practices for the industry can’t be determined unless regulators know exactly how fish farms run. For instance, a responsible carrying capacity for a bay must be set based on the numbers of fish stocked.

DMR data are concerned only with the water around the pens and the sea bottom directly beneath the pens, and, thus, are incomplete, Merrill said.

“Our point is, the board doesn’t know what these farms are putting into the water,” he said.