AUGUSTA – Several environmental groups are challenging a Clean Water Act discharge permit for salmon farms that the Maine Board of Environmental Protection approved last month.

The National Environmental Law Center – on behalf of the Sierra Club, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Conservation Law Foundation – says more protections are needed to counter threats to water quality and to wild salmon.

The groups contend that the Maine BEP improperly issued one general permit for all of Maine’s salmon farms, rather than individual permits for each operation.

In addition, the groups charge that the seafloor near the farms could be harmed by discharges, in violation of state water quality laws.

The groups also argue that the permit does not provide adequate measures to protect wild salmon from salmon that get loose from the farms.

“The Baldacci administration can, and must, do better than this,” Vivian Newman, Sierra Club Maine Chapter’s conservation chairwoman, said in a statement Friday.

“State bureaucrats have issued a permit that makes it difficult for citizens to challenge problem farm sites, leaves wild salmon at high risk of extinction from interactions with escaping farm-bred fish, and fails to protect acres of seabeds from factory farm pollution.

“With over 300 years of fishing know-how, we should be able to protect our natural heritage, fishing jobs, and aquaculture at the same time,” she said.

Deputy Commissioner Brooke Barnes of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection said the issuance of a general permit is contemplated in the Clean Water Act when environmental impacts are limited.

Barnes also said the permit calls for the marking of fish and monitoring of seafloor conditions.

Two members of U.S. PIRG are also petitioners in the Kennebec County Superior Court filing: Charles Fitzgerald of Atkinson and Stephen Crawford of Perry.