MACHIAS – A proposed state permitting system that limits the amount of feed, excrement and other pollutants that can be discharged from Maine salmon farms drew mixed reviews here Thursday.

Among the concerns were that the proposed regulations would prohibit the future use of genetically modified salmon and that restrictions on fish medicines would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship between veterinarians and salmon.

Those who want to see more stringent water quality regulations for salmon farming described a “green slime” that has been building on the clam flats of Cobscook Bay and the potential human health problems posed by the industry’s use of pesticides to treat such conditions as sea lice.

More than 80 people attended Thursday’s public hearing, the first of two being conducted by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection. The second hearing will take place at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the Spectacular Event Center in Bangor and will continue on Feb. 12.

The BEP, the citizens’ board that oversees the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, will make the final decision on what salmon farmers must do to qualify for a permit.

Thursday’s hearing was limited to the general public – people or organizations that have not been granted intervenor status in the rule-making process. Intervenors – the 15 industry, environmental and government groups the BEP determined will be directly affected by the permit – will testify during the Bangor hearings.

Those who did testify Thursday expressed a range of opinions.

Joseph McGonigle, vice president of Aqua Bounty Farms, the company that has developed a genetically modified, faster-growing salmon, asked the board to amend that portion of the draft that prohibited the use of transgenic salmon in aquaculture operations.

Genetically altered salmon have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but McGonigle asked the board “to leave a window open” for sterile transgenics, genetically modified fish that can’t reproduce and, as a result, would pose no genetic threat to endangered wild Atlantic salmon.

The prohibition on transgenic salmon and a similar restriction on the use of salmon with non-North American genes were included in the draft permit requirements at the request of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the two federal fishery agencies that listed the wild Atlantic salmon in eight Maine water bodies as endangered.

Eric Swanson, a Hancock County fish farmer, also took exception to that part of the permit that was developed by the federal agencies, saying that marking or tagging aquaculture fish so that they can be traced back to the farm they escaped is not worth the cost.

Most aquaculture escapees come from Canada, which has twice as many farms as Maine, Swanson said.

Representatives of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Maine Veterinary Medicine Association, and the Eastern Aquaculture Veterinary Association testified that the FDA and USDA are the agencies that regulate veterinary medicines and that the DEP does not have the expertise to make decisions on off-label and experimental uses of veterinary drugs.

William Bryant, Maine Veterinary Medicine Association vice president, said the involvement of the DEP could result in a violation of the veterinary-patient relationship.

Nine of the 15 people who testified asked the board to set even stricter controls on the discharges from salmon pens, saying that water quality was critical to other fisheries and human health.

Julie Keene Hodgkins, a commercial fisherman from Lubec, showed the board pictures of algae that she said had been growing on Cobscook Bay clam flats since the advent of salmon aquaculture 15 years ago.

The seaweed is the result of “extra nutrient loading,” excess feed, and other materials that are coming from the salmon pens, she said.